MINORITY REPORT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403130006-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 27, 2012
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: July 6, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403130006-8
ARTICLB LRFB
08 FAGS
NATION
6/13 July 1985
MINORITY REPORT.
The whole misery and disgrace of current U.S. in-
volvement with the "wrong side" in Central
America began with the invasion of Guatemala ,
(sometimes described as the coup in Guatemala) in
1954. This invasion/coup was brought off by the usual
suspects-Vice President Richard Nixon, the C.I.A., the
United Fruit Company and other practitioners of destabili-
zation. Even today, the more polished conservatives have to re-
press a shudder at the recollections o 1 4 and its artemaih.
But in Bitter F~ uit, their exemplary account of the uate-
malan intervention, Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer
also describe how solicitous the destabilizers were to the
small but significant forces of liberalism and social
democracy in the United States. They relate that Edward
Bernays, chief lobbyist of the forces seeking to overthrow
the elected government of Jicobo Arbenz,
had an especially close relationship with The New Leader, a
vigorously anti-Communist liberal weekly.... Bernays per-
suaded the Fruit Company to sponsor public service ad-
vertisements on behalf of the Red Cross and U.S. Savings
Bonds in the magazine at $1,000 a page, far above the going
rate. lb New Leader ... carried numerous articles, both
before and after the coup, justifying intervention against
Arbenz's regime on the grounds that a Soviet takeover was
imminent.
A managing editor of The New Leader in the 1950x, Daniel
James, wrote a book titled Red Design for the Americas,
which provided a rationalle for the destruction of Guatemalan
democracy. United evil C.I.A. cooperated to insure
dFa-M luminous work a wide distribution.
I thought continually of this episode as I attended the
national convention of Social Democrats, U.S.A., held in
Washington from June 14 to 16. This organization, which
might better be known as Social Democrats, U.S.A.!
U.S.A.1 and which has the crust to claim descent from the
party of Debs and Thomas, is little understood or studied
but highly influential. Combining the worst of old left sec-
tarian venom with the cheapest line in neoconservative
platitudes, S.D.,U.S.A. has provided the intellectual con-
text for Jeane Kirkpatrick and some useful cover for other
Humphrey-Jackson Democrats in transition. In transition
to what? Well, their guru, Carl Gershman, held Kirk-
patrick's fragrant coat at the United Nations for many
years, served the Kissinger commission on Central America
and now heads Reagan's National Endowment for Democ-
racy. In other words, don't be fooled by the fact that the
mode of address at S.D.,U.S.A. meetings is still "comrade."
There's a lot not to be fooled by at these affairs. Alfonso
Robelo had been invited as the star guest, to do for the con-
tras what his 1954 predecessors did for Castillo Armas. He
gave a bland speech, sounding for all the world as if the
campaign against Nicaragua was being waged by members
of the Young Social Democrats and the more highly evolved
forces of the Socialist International. He lauded the Lew
Lehrman coalition of anti-Soviet guerrillas (incidentally, I
do not see how any of that bunch could have got into
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Angola without being taken through occupied Namibia by
the South Africans).
When I asked him about the "social democratic" leader-
ship of Col. Enrique Bermudez, he became ever so slightly
less silky. To keep harping on about the Somoza National
Guard, he said, was like saying that all the Wehrmacht were
responsible for war crimes. This Bitburg reference, probably
intended for a later speech at the convention of Young
Americans for Fascism, may have just slipped out, but I
didn't notice any of the Social Democrats objecting. They
didn't even raise a murmur when Robelo claimed to have in-
vestigated all the former Guardsmen in the F.D.N. and
found them blameless of atrocities under Somoza.
Your typical Social Democrat has a wised-up, pitying
manner. You are looking at someone, he seems to say, who
has left illusions behind him. No flies can settle on this
smirking countenance. Don't you know, the face seems to
ask, that the world is a dangerous place? Haven't you read
The Gulag Archipelago? Ever heard of the boat people?
Don't you want America to be strong? Aren't you aware
that you can't demonstrate for nuclear disarmament in the
Soviet Union? At about this point, and to distract myself
from the overmastering desire to slap the face, I imagine
myself demonstrating for nuclear disarmament in the Soviet
Union and being locked up by someone with precisely those
features and that tone of voice.
But, in fact, for all their worldly wisdom, the S.D.s are
extremely naive. They are the useful idiots of the Reagan
revolution. They were the last political formation in
America to realize that the Vietnam War was not being
fought by democratic forces or for democratic ends. Many
of them still feel that with a bit more "political will" (favor-
ite S.D. and neocon term) the trick might have been pulled
off. They have a utopian and protective attitude toward
Israel which in its myopia rivals that of any old party hack
toward the Soviet Union. They think that Jean-Francois
Revel is a new philosopher. They think that Aleksandr Sol-
zhenitsyn is a social democrat, though some of them have
suppressed worries about his attitude toward the Vlasovites.
They think they "saw through" Carter and McGovern
before anyone else did, but they modestly understate their
role in Democrats for Nixon.
Intellectually contemptible though they may be, the Social
Democrats shine like pearls among the Reaganite swine.
Left to itself, the old conservative movement could not
have come up with fluent twisters like Kirkpatrick, Elliott
Abrams and Max Kampelman, nor mastered a standard of
apologetics anywhere near that of Commentary or the Com-
mittee for the Free World. A certain vital patina has thus
been provided to this government of Christian bigots
and thwarted militarists by an ostensibly secular, inter-
nationalist political tendency. As with Guatemala or Viet-
nam, the S.D.s will be somewhere else while the actual
slaughtering is done-probably accusing the journalists who
report it of "blaming America first." But as with Guate-
mala and Vietnam, they show that every little bit helps.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403130006-8