'GET-TOUGH' VISITS HELPED EL SALVADOR TO SHAPE UP

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302360014-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: May 28, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302360014-6
AtTICLE til)710113
`Get-tou
WASHINGTON TIMES
28 May 1985
, visits helped
El Salvador to shape up
SAN SALVADOR
At the time of Vice President
George Bush's seminal
Dec. 11, 1983 visit to El Sal-
vador, his impact on the
Salvadoran civil war received cur-
sory press treatment. It was over-
shadowed, like almost everything
else, by the apparently endless
"death squad" killings.
Seldom had an American leader
been so tough. First, he met with the
'acting executive, then with the top
.military leadership, then with El Sal-
vador's 31 military commanders.
His visit was designed so that no one
, could mistake the message.
' Mr. Bush told them clearly that
certain military officers had to be
reassigned, that all arrests by plain-
clothesmen (in effect, the death
'squads) must end, and that arrests
must be followed immediately by
cables to the prisoners' families, to
' the Catholic archbishop, and to the
. International Red Cross.
; Mr. Bush stressed that this should
not be construed as undue American
. "pressure." It was just that the
'United States, which, after all, is a
crucial source of aid for El Salvador,
was approaching an election year ?
and Congress questions aid to a gov-
ernment that has not cleaned up its
,
act.
The vice president's message was
followed not only by clear and per-
sistent signals, but by a few more
pointed visits. In 1984, when the
right-wing Roberto D'Aubuisson,
- reputed head of the death squads,
was threatening to kill the American
ambassador, Gen. Vernon Walters
was sent down to deliver, well, a
"perfectly clear" message about the
consequences of such actions.
Gen. Walters, whom some
American officials sometimes
admiringly call the "rat-killer,"
apparently dissuaded the vacant-
7GEORGIE ANNE GEYER
eyed D'Aubuisson from his violent
course.
American policy has been far
from perfect in the violent cauldron
known as El Salvador ? President
Reagan, for example, should have
immediately seized on the killing of
the four American churchwomen
four years ago in El Salvador to
destroy the death squads. But U.S.
policy toward El Salvador has sel-
dom been what most Americans
think it is. It has not been, for
instance, traditional "imperialism"
or even interventionism.
The United States could be con-
demned more for not caring than for
intervening in El Salvador during
the crucial years when the military
was taking over and the Marxist
guerrilla movement was growing.
From 1972 to 1978, the CIA station
here was closed. El Salvador, at a
most crucial juncture, was consid-
ered that unimportant in the grand
scheme of things.
The first significant step out of El
Salvador's feudal past occurred in
1979, when reformist officers and
politicians took over the country.
Unfortunately, elements of the old
regime still remained in many key
areas. It was these members that
Mr. Bush addressed in 1983 on
behalf of the reformist groups. Sub-
sequent U.S. ambassadors also
pushed for reform. So did others in
an embassy often considered bril-
liant by analysts here.
Little known, for instance, is the
case of a young foreign service offi-
cer, Carl Boettinger, who personally
broke the terrible case of the four
murdered American missionaries.
He dug up the roster of the Salva-
doran soldiers who had been at the
airport on the night of the killings,
and it was his work that finally iden-
tified these subhuman murderers ?
killers that the new, reformed mili-
tary rightly is trying to get rid of.
El Salvador is at a new point now,
and so is the United States. Salva-
doran Gen. Eugenio Vides Casanova
told me recently that the "influence"
of the United States was important
in the beginning, in terms of moving
El Salvador toward a democratic
system, but that now it is not so "nec-
essary" because El Salvador is mov-
ing in that direction anyway. That is
, correct ? and it is a very welcome
development.
But has the United States itself
learned from El Salvador? The most
fascinating aspect of the relation-
ship, apart from the benefit to the
Salvadoran people, is what El Salva-
dor has given to American under-
standing of the Vietnam
"syndrome."
To put it perhaps crassly but with
respect for the people of El Salvador,
U,S. aid and pressure have worked.
here. They have worked because the
United States used intelligent coun-
terinsurgency tactics and strategy.
They have worked because men like
Mr. Bush and Gen. Walters were sent
at the right moment to make clear
(as we did not in Vietnam) what we
would tolerate and what we would
not.
Finally ? and while this point
may - be the most difficult for the
American people to understand, it
remains the most crucial ? democ-
racy is working in El Salvador
because the United States supported
a democratic political process that
was already in place. We could suc-
cessfully support a reformed mili-
tary only because a truly
democratic and representative
group, in this case the reformist
Christian Democrats, had already
captured the imagination and met
, the needs of the people. It is really
that simple.
Georgie Anne Geyer is a nation-
ally syndicated columnist.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302360014-6