COVERT ACTION INFORMATION BULLETIN: SPECIAL: THE NEW RIGHT AND U.S. INTELLIGENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000100190001-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
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• Document Page Count: 48
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 9, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 1, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Number 12 April 1981 $2.50
Special: THE NEW RIGHT
AND U.S. INTELLIGENCE
?
INFORIVIATION BULLETIN
El Salvador:
U.S. Intervention
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EDITORIAL
Since our last issue, the Reagan administration has
mo~~ed into Washington, filling nearly every available
government post with ultra-conservatives so far to the right
that tl7e fears of everyone before inauguration have been
sho a~r- to be inadequate. The so-called New Right is not
wasting any time; attempts to implement the most extreme
of F:eagan's policies, at home and around the world, are
under way.
One: of the most serious moves is the establishment of a
Sen ate Subcommittt;e on Security and Terrorism. A report
in this issue explains how dangerous this subcommittee can
be, how it represents the cutting edge of a return to the
Cold War and McCarthyism. But the SST is only one of a
number of direct attacks upon progressive forces. There
are plans for a new Un-American Activities Committee in
the House of Representatives, and the government has
announced that it intends to amend the Executive Order of
the Carter administration which attempted to place some
minimal limitations on illegal FBI and CIA activities. [See
sidebar.) Moves to exempt the FBI and the CIA and other
intelligence agencies from the Freedom of Information Act
are well under way. And, of course, the Intelligence Identi-
ties Protection Act is moving through the new, more con-
servative Congress.
CONTENTS
Editorial
U?S. Intervention
2
The Subcommittee on Security
and Terrorism 32
in El Salvador
5
Spies and the Reagan Victory 35
R~~agan's Guatemala
Connection
16
Naming Names
41
"~~ttack on the Americas"
22
Publications of Interest
42
Tree CIA in Mozambique
24
News Notes
Sources and Methods:
46
Ni~w CIA Director Profiled
28
Mail Surveillance
48
CovertAction Information Bulletin, Number 12, April 1981, published by Covert Action Publications, Inc., a District of Columbia Nonprofit
Corporation, P.O. Box 50272, Washington, DC 20004. Telephone: [phone]. All rights reserved; copyright ?1981 by Covert Action Publications,
Inc. "typography by Art for People, Washington, DC: printing by Facu/ty Press, Brooklyn, NY. Washington staff: Ellen Ray, William Schaap, Louis
Wolf, Seewart Klepper. Board of Advisors: Philip Agee, Ken Lawrence, Elsie Wilcott, Jim Wilcott. The CovertAction /nformation Bulletin is available at
mane bookstores around the world. Inquiries from distributors and subscription services welcomed. Indexed in the Alternative Press /ndex.
2 CovertAction Number 12 (April 1981)
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In an ominous move, the SST has taken jurisdiction in
the Senate over the bill, as have both intelligence commit-
tees. Bills identical to those discussed, but not passed last
year, have been introduced, as have some even more ex-
treme in their prohibitions. One Member of Congress has
even introduced a bill which makes it a crime to name
intelligence personnel incorrectly!
Some of the more outrageous Reagan appointments are
discussed in this issue. It is clear that the advocates of a
stronger and more unrestrained CIA can be found at all
levels of all agencies. Also in this issue Fred Landis presents
some interesting insights into the sinister linkages which
can be found between and among these appointees and
their mentors. We also take a look at the dubious back-
Proposed Executive Order Change
on Domestic Intelligence Gathering
On March 10, a typewritten proposed amendment
of Executive Order 12036 was simultaneously leaked
to all the major U.S. media. That Order was issued by
President Carter on January 24, 1978, and purported
to impose certain limitations on intelligence activi-
ties, particularly prohibiting domestic CIA activity of
the sort which had become notorious in Operation
CHAOS and Operation MKULTRA. It also im-
posed certain limitations on FBI activity, setting rela-
tively strict standards of suspicion before what are
euphemistically called "intrusive methods" could be
used. This term refers tobreak-ins, wiretaps, burglar-
ies, provocations, infiltrations, and so on.
The Reagan administration draft amendment not
only lifted most of the minimal restrictions previous-
ly imposed on the FBI; it also-probably illegally,
given the 1947 statute which created the CIA
opened the door to CIA domestic spying and use of
intrusive methods. There was an immediate outcry
over the projected unleashing of the CIA at home,
leading to denials from the Deputy Director of the
CIA, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, that the CIA had
any intention of expanding its domestic activities.
Indeed, though Inman would not admit it, the CIA
has never ceased all of its illegal domestic activity,
with or without an Executive Order.
The unusual leak of a draft of this sensitive nature,
coupled with the denials relating to the CIA, raises a
serious question. By including the CIA, leaking the
document, and then backing away from the CIA
portions of the proposal, the government has man-
aged to make most people, especially the media, ig-
nore the provisions which relate to the FBI, which
will most likely be enacted. These provisions are
frightening; they legitimize virtually all the aspects of
the FBI's COINTELPRO operations of the 1960s
and 1970s. For example, shown here are the pro-
posed regulations relating to infiltration of domestic
organizations. Carter's Order required that such par-
ticipation be "in the course of a lawful investigation;"
the proposal is limited to "any lawful purpose," a
much vaguer standard. Carter's Order required that
the organization "is reasonably believed to be acting
on behalf of a foreign power;"there is no such limita-
tion in the new proposal. The Carter Order also said
that such infiltration could not be "for the purpose of
influencing the activity of the organization or its
members," another restriction which has been
removed.
This is just one example. The proposal contains
many such authorizations for intrusive spying and
manipulation by the FBI and other intelligence agen-
cies,even if all the references to the CIA are removed.
This proposal, which can go into effect simply with
the signature of the President, must be opposed. Per-
sons wishing further information should write to:
The Campaign for Political Rights, 20l Massachu-
setts Ave. NE, Washington, DC 20002.
Portion of Proposed Executive Order
'2-206. Undisclosed Participation in Do-estic
Organizations. In accordance with procedures established under
section 2-201, employees of agencies within the Intelligence
Community may join, or otherwise participate in an organization
within the United States on behalf of an agency within the
Intelligence Community for any lawful purpose without disclosing
their intelligence affiliation to appropriate officials of the
organization, provided:
(a) Participation by any agency other than the FBI for
purposes of acquiring information about the organization or any
United States person who is a member thereof is strictly limited
in its nature, scope and duration to a lawful purpose related to
foreign intelligence and nondisclosure is necessary to achieve
that purpose; and
(b) Participation by the CIA for purposes of affecting the
activities of the organization is limited to attaining legitimate
foreign intelligence objectives when the appropriate officials to
whom disclosure normally would be made are foreign nationals or
the organization involved is owned or controlled by a foreign
organization or government or is working for or on behalf of a
foreign organization or government and such participation ie
conducted in a manner that provides due protection for constitu-
tional rights.
Number 12 (April 1981)
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ground of the new Director of the CIA, William Casey.
Thc: immediate focal point of administration hardline,
reactiociary politics is El Salvador. Why Reagan and Secre-
tary of `.hate Haig chose the issue of El Salvador to revive
Cold War hysteria is hard to understand, and extremely
perplexiing to U.S. alllies in Europe, who know that they
provide the battlefield for any limited East-West confron-
tatior, .They also recognize, as the U. S. government appar-
ently does not, that nobody will win a nuclear war.
It seems that the possibility of an imminent victory by
the revolutionary forces in EI Salvador simply surfaced as
the Reagan-Haig team was settling into their new offices,
and they decided to put their Cold War policies immediate-
ly into effect. In our lead articles this issue, we try to
analyse the situation in El Salvador and in Guatemala,
where a similar struggle against an equally repressive re-
gime is under way. It is unlikely that the United States
under Reagan can hold back the forces of history any more
than it could under his predecessors, but it is necessary for
the world to comprehend fully, as do the victims, the extent
of the human suffering which must be attributed to direct
U.S. interference.
Developments in EI. Salvador also provided a striking
example of the power of the new administration to
flumrnax and bully the press and, indeed, of the subser-
viena~ of the U.S. media. Concerned that the press was
looking too closely Tinto conditions in EI Salvador, and
afraid that the press might question the suspect White
Paper which the State Department circulated, the govern-
ment took the unusual step of calling a special State
Department background briefing for correspondents at
which they announced that the press was making too much
of a "big deal" out of El Salvador. The press huffed and
puffed :For a day or two; Secretary Haig said they didn't
really mean it; but, within days EI Salvador was off the
front pgaed Ali Haa-
dro. a sott-featured man ~ttli long fuzsy
sideburns who appaated co be the senior
man in the gtoap, said that t>Ze offensive
had not been gWen the expected popular
support In the capital and that a planned
uprlslag in the oouatryside had been
But they said t;
hogd of a negotiate
that a GoMSmmen
a "masted atratep
not negotiate bec~
the Covetnaaent.
"i! they really
tion." All Haadro
bave to do is haw
pro~vlde them lwitl
what is lengthenin
past several months in an otherwise brutal and deadly
historical saga. Because, as anyone who speaks
Spanish-obviously not Schumacher-knows, one
of the most common Spanish given names is
Alejandro; in English, Alexander. Who knows how
many readers of the New York Times wondered what
this young man with an obviously Arabic name was
doing in El Salvador; perhaps this was the PLO
connection!
Number 12 (April 1981)
propaganda"-forged documents designed to discredit the
group from which it is claimed they originate. A number of
tricks have been employed in this document. In some cases
the Spanish original is literally illegible-no translation
can be rendered from the original, so the "translation"
must be taken on faith. Other papers are innocuous until
"interpreted"in the English "translation". Some are merely
scratch paper with figures, and one must take on faith that
the numbers refer to tons of guns. If they do, then the
popular forces are much better armed than any other evi-
denceindicates. One document is in Spanish script, and has
notations on arms shipments typed into blank spaces in
English and neatly underlined.
Other textual errors indicate that the document was
hastily compiled and inadequately proofread. As one
example, the military is referred to as "milicos" in the
Spanish; the term is widely used in Chile but virtually
unheard of in El Salvador. Also the use of commas and
periods is inconsistent with Spanish usage. In Spanish
large numbers are divided with a period, i.e., 10,000 would
be written 10.000 in Spanish. In the document the style
shifts back and forth, commas and periods being used
interchangeably. These and other errors indicate that the
"proof" is in its most significant parts a forgery, and a
relatively crude one. A perceptive reader noted that the
media's treatment of the document reminded him of
Pascal: "I believe it because it is absurd."
On the surface, the allegations are implausible. By
admission, the vast majority of weapons being used by the
popular forces are of American manufacture. These wea-
pons are available on the black market, and it is well
established that the Salvadorans have been purchasing
large quantities of weapons for more than a year, mainly in
Costa Rica and Panama.
Shafik Handal, the alleged mastermind of the communist
arms flow, issued a statement on February 26 denying the
charges. Hewent on to raise the following questions: "Why
were the supposed documents published first in New York
and not in El Salvador? And why has the State Depart-
ment rather than the fascist Christian Democratic junta
assumed responsibility for their publication?"
The response of European leaders to this "evidence" has
been decidedly cool, but the document was designed to
play in Peoria, not Bonn or Paris. Significantly, shortly
after this "proof" emerged, Reagan announced that his
Ambassador to E1 Salvador would be Deane Hinton.
Hinton served in Santiago, Chile from 1969 to 1971 the
period of intense CIA black propaganda activity against
the Allende government.
Reagan's Team: Terrorists Capture State Department
After picking Hinton for Ambassador, Reagan an-
nounced his choice for the key position of Assistant Secre-
tary of State for Inter-American Affairs. In a move that
stunned many observers, he chose a man who speaks no
Spanish and has no background in Latin American affairs.
Thomas Enders is the man, and his experience goes back to
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Kampuchea, where he was Deputy Chief of Mission from
1971 until 1974-while Nixon was conducting the "secret
war," bombing Kampuchea while his officials denied
before Congress-as well as the press-that this was hap-
penin;;.
Enders isn't the only Indochina veteran in theEl Salvador
team. The head of the Military Assistance Group in El
Salvador is Col. Eldon Cummings, who was the chief
military adviser to Gen. Vang Pao in Laos during the late
sixties and early seventies. Vang Pao was the CIA's top
man iii its largest paramilitary operation to date, the use of
the Hmong people as~ surrogate forces fighting another
branc ~ of the secret war in northern Laos.
Finally, it should be remembered that Secretary of State
Alexander Haig went from Vietnam to become Kissinger's
aide, ,end as such was intimately involved in the bloody
camp:ii~;n against the constitutional government of Chile,
which began with the C'IA's assassination of Chilean Army
Chief of Staff Rene Schneider and continued till the death
of Allende and thousands of patriotic Chileans at the
hands of Gen. PinochE;t. Haig's denunciation of terrorists
should be viewed in the perspective of his campaign of
terror against the people of Chile.
Duarr,e's "Popular" Government: Can This Mirage
Be Saved?
The myth of land reform has been virtually played out.
Shortly after Viera's murder, his successor Lionel Gomez
fled the country after hiding in a Salvadoran slum while the
death~,quad-military sE;arched the neighborhood for him.
He we uld have fled earlier if the government had agreed to
allow the ISTA officials in the countryside to leave also,
but al;aiin the necessity of preserving a facade of land
reform required that no mass exodus of ISTA officials take
place. Ire Washington Gomez talked openly of the failure
of land reform, and expressed a desire to return to El
Salvador and fight with the popular forces.
Virtually every ISTA official is now dead, in hiding, or
in exile. Obviously a new lie is required to support the
American policy. This time it is the notion that Duarte's
ineffectual government is the choice of the Salvadoran
people, who have lost a.ny sympathy for the left they might
once have possessed and are now being terrorized by a
small band of fanatic communists. This claim is absurd on
its facE~--the current president of the Democratic Revolu-
tionary :Front is Guillermo Ungo, a member of the first
junta ;cnd a Social Democrat whose progressive position
has won praise from international leaders such as Willy
Brandt, Olaf Palme, and Lopez Portillo.
In f.ic1:, popular support of the left is great and increas-
ing. Ire the January general offensive, the second largest
city in EI Salvador, Santa Ana, was taken by the popular
forces when a contingent of over 160 soldiers joined the
revolution and burned the army engineering school to the
grounif. Unprepared for this uprising, the popular forces
were unable to hold Santa Ana; in their retreat they were
joined by a string of people over two miles long and num-
An FMLN squad which annihilated a National Guard
convoy at Santa Ana.
bering over 10,000.
Meanwhile, the right has been rushing to get its money
out of the country. In December Duarte stated that there
are "several rightwing groups which have taken $1.2 bil-
lion, which represents three times the annual budget" out
of the country. They have elected to fight from the safe
haven of Miami, and to a lesser extent Guatemala City,
financing the deathsquads from a safe distance.
The army is now demoralized, largely confined to its
barracks in the major towns, and without offensive capa-
bilities. What little activity it engages in is primarily
blackmail of the peasants; a few hundred dollars a month
will keep the members of a peasant co-op from being shot.
While the Salvadoran Army is pinned down in the major
towns, the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front has made
great strides in creating unity and improving its battlefield
tactics. Thanks to advanced radio communication equip-
mentcaptured inthe January offensive, the FMLN has the
ability to coordinate military operations efficiently through-
outthe country. In the opinion of most observers, the next
offensive, scheduled for May, should be successful in the
absence of massive intervention by the U.S. or surrogate
forces fighting as U.S. mercenaries. This view is shared by
Reagan and his advisers, who have made EI Salvador a
high-profile issue at the risk of deflecting attention from
the Reagan economic plan.
The extent of U.S involvement in El Salvador is increas-
ing so fast that any figures mentioned at the time of this
writing are likely to be outdated within a few weeks.
Already there are over fifty, and possibly several hundred
U.S. military personnel in El Salvador, including Army
Special Forces "Green Berets" sent from the U.S. Army
School of the Americas in Panama, designated by the
administration as "technical advisers,"to distinguish them
from the "military advisers" we initially dispatched to
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Vietnam. Total military aid in this calendar year will prob-
ably exceed $35 million, the amount currently budgeted.
The Reagan administration is committed to "draw the
line" in El Salvador. A difference of opinion exists as to
how they will attempt to do this. One school of thought has
been that the admininstration would finance and equip
surrogate forces from the region, say from Guatemala and
Honduras, or Venezuela and Chile. These forces could
then be sent in under the guise of a hemispheric peace-
keepingforce, amove that would constitute a public rela-
tions coup for Reagan. The difficulty with this plan is
getting the forces into the field in time. Guatemala has a
reasonably competent army, but it is committed to fighting
the growing insurgency there. Honduras has a weak army,
though we are rushing roughly five million dollars of mili-
taryaid to them; they are a poor choice for an intervention
force because they fought El Salvador in the 1969 "soccer
war" and would be about as popular in El Salvador as a
German "peacekeeping force" would be in Paris. Venezu-
ela has supported the junta in El Salvador publicly, but is
unlikely to risk the condemnation of most of the world by
sending in troops.
Even if a surrogate force could be recruited, it would
take precious time. The Pentagon has been pushing for
direct U.S. involvement for at least a year. Reagan's pro-
nouncements and appointments point toward a policy of
direct U.S. military intervention. The scenario seems clear:
A few hundred "advisers" will be in place by May, and
when the first one is shot, hundreds more will be sent to
protect the first group. Before anyone can discuss the War
Powers Act, once thought to have relevance in this type of
situation, we will be in a full-scale shooting war again.
Civilians being harrassed by members of the Salvadoran
Army.
As in the case of the early years of U.S. involvement in
Vietnam, the official troop figures may be considerably
understated. CR IB spoke on March 23 with the father of
one of the Green Berets now in El Salvador. He said his son
is part of a 60-man reconnaissance team at Ft. Benning,
Georgia. "He wouldn't be there without the other 59," he
said. When asked how many U.S. "advisors" were really in
Number 12 (April 1981)
El Salvador, he suggested "at least 200." In any case, it
seems highly unlikely that there are merely 50-plus U.S.
soldiers in EI Salvador at this time. FMLN spokespeople
say that there are over 800 U.S. troops in EI Salvador
already.
Surrogate forces may play a part in the Reagan strategy,
however. For the dirtiest work, including raids to Nicara-
gua, exiles from Cuba and former members of the Nicara-
guan National Guard are likely to be employed. Already
there are several hundred former Nicaraguan Guardsmen
encamped on the Honduras-Nicaragua border staging
raids into Nicaragua. Another group of possibly two
hundred Nicaraguan exiles are fighting with the Salva-
doran army and the private deathsquads. Together with
the Cuban exile "secret army" which Reagan is reported to
be reconstituting, this mercenary force represents a serious
threat to the Nicaraguan revolution and to the aspirations
of the people of Central America.
In the region-wide war that seems imminent there will be
powerful forces opposed to U.S. intervention. Mexico is
strongly against the U.S. policy of sending military aid and
advisers, as is Panama. In Europe there is practically no
support for the American policy, with the exception of
Margaret Thatcher's conservative government in the U.K.
Canadians demonstrated against U.S. intervention during
Reagan's recent visit to that country.
Domestically, the Catholic Church has been in the fore-
front of opposition to the U.S. policy. The International
Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union voted in
December to boycott military cargo for EI Salvador, and
they have been piling up on two docks in San Francisco
since then, to the embarrassment of the administration.
The White House is receiving hundreds of letters a week in
protest of U.S. intervention-they are routinely forwarded
to the State Department, where they pile up, many
unopened.
On May 3, 1981, the largest anti-war march in half a
decade will take place in Washington, sponsored by the
People's Anti-War Organization and over 500 individuals
and groups. Through fast and united action, we may be
able to prevent the genocidal destruction of the Salva-
doran people.
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DEATHSQUADS:
THE REAL GOVERNMENT OF EL SALVADOR
Deathsquads have their origins in the private
armies that the large landholders have traditionally
maintained to keep the peasants in line and to
increase their own influence. These small private
armies still exist, but the vast majority of murders
and atrocities are now committed by nationwide
organizations which enjoy close cooperation from
the Army, often conducting joint operations with the
Army, National Guard, and Treasury Police. They
have no respect. for the ruling junta, except as a
vehicle for procuring U.S. aid. This was expressed at
a news conference on May 22, 1980, when leaders of
seven deathsquads announced that they were uniting
into a rightwing army to "physically eliminate all
leaders of the Salvadoran Communist Party. .
members of the p;overnment who back the Marxists,
and all communiists... In the junta and in the cabinet
there are communists infiltrated preparing to take
power." A number of officials of the first and second
.juintas have fled the country after receiving death
threats, including Assistant Minister of Agriculture
.Jorge Alberto Viillacorte Munoz and Lionel Gomez,
who took over ISTA after Rodolfo Viera was killed.
The following are the principal deathsquads:
~()1~DEN: Organisation Democratica Nacionalista
i;Democratic Nationalist Organization)
BORDEN was founded by General Jose Alberto
I "Chele") Medrano in 1968, the same year the
AIFLD program founded UCS. Medrano has ties to
1 hc; CIA going back to the early 1960s, and was a
1~avored candidate of the U.S. in the 1972 elections.
I)ItDEN's forces are said to number between 50,000
and 100,000, though these figures may be inflated to
increase the organization's image of invincibility.
1=rom 1968 to 1979, ORDEN was an official branch
of the military, a.nd its members were authorized to
carry arms, conciuet searches, and generally act as
they saw fit. The first junta attempted to abolish
t)F~DEN with Decree Law 12, but the group was
reconstructed by Medrano as the National Demo-
cratic Front.
cradling their children in their arms, and then the
children were shot. ORDEN also participated in the
Sampol River massacre, where 600 peasants died,
caught between ORDEN and the National Guard on
one bank of the river, and the Honduran Army on
the other. Young children were thrown into the air
and used for target practice; women were raped and
mutilated before finally being killed.
UGB: Union Guerrilla Blanca (White Warriors
Union)
Headed by Roberto D'Aubuisson, this is probably
the most political of all the deathsquads. D'Aubuis-
son was trained at the International Police Academy
in Washington, and served under Gen. Romero as
second in command of the intelligence system, where
he supervised torture and is said to have personally
carved dozens of people with a knife. Officially
barred from entering the U.S., he travelled to this
country in May of last year and met with many
prominent Americans, including Roger Fontaine,
who is now an advisor to Richard Allen, head of the
National Security Council. D'Aubuisson claims to
have close ties to the CIA, and says he met former
Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Daniel
Graham last May. Despite these associations, our
sources believe that it was his group which executed
Viera, Hammer, and Pearlman in the San Salvador
Sheraton.
One of the White Warriors' first acts was to an-
nounce, in 1977, that all Jesuit priests who stayed in
the country would be killed; at least seven Jesuits
have been murdered since then, and many more have
left the country.
Former Ambassador Robert White has called
D'Aubuisson "a psychopathic killer."
FALANGE: Fuerzas Armadas de Liberation Anticom-
unista-Guerra de Eliminacion (Armed Forces for
Anticommunist Liberation-War of Elimination)
Atypical example of ORDEN's work is the massa-
cre on July 9, 1980 of the residents of the village of
lvlogotes in La Libertad province, 20 miles from the
capital. Thirty-one members of the Mojica Santos
family were murdered, including fifteen children
under the age of ten. Mothers were shot while
FALANGE is a mysterious deathsquad compris-
ing both active and retired members of the security
forces. One of its activities is the execution of soldiers
who are suspected of sympathy for the popular for-
ces, or who request leave-as it is known that many
soldiers on leave never return to their units.
Number 12 (April 1981)
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Reagan Administration Links
With Guatemala's Terrorist Government
by Allan Nairn*
L,oc;al businessmen and government officials involved
withGuatemala's notorious deathsquads say they have
struck a deal with Ronald Reagan which provides for
restoration of U.S. weapons sales and training facilities to
the Guatemalan military and police, curtailment of State
Department criticism of the Guatemalan regime's massive
human rights violations, and the ultimate prospect of U.S.
military intervention to shore up that beleaguered Central
American government.
Before his election., Reagan met personally with two
leading spokesmen of the Guatemalan right and also
throu,~h a series of visits to the country by aides and
associates conveyed ttte details of what one U.S. business-
man calls his promised "180-degree turn" in U.S. policy
toward Guatemala. T11ese visits include one at the time of
the Republican Convention to offer Reagan's "salute" to
Guatemalan president General Romeo Lucas Garcia and
inform him that "things were going to be changing."
High-level Guatemalan officials say that Reagan's
assur~.nt:es may already have led to an increase in the
number of deathsquad assassinations and a senior leader of
Guatemala's moderate Christian Democratic Party-
alread ydecimated by more than 34 assassinations of its top
leadership in the last }year-fears for his life.
Conservative Caucus and John Laxalt, president of
Reagan'sshadnw-campaign organization Citizens for
the Republic, and brother of the Reagan campaign
chairperson, Senator Paul Laxalt.
? A spring, 1980 meeting in California between Reagan
and Guatemalan hotel magnate Eduardo Carrette,
the man whom General Lucas has asked to be his new
ambassador to the U.S. and a leading figure in Ami-
gos del Pais, a pressure group comprised of business-
men and landowners which Guatemala's recently-re-
signed Vice President Dr. Francisco Villagran Kramer
has compared to the John Birch Society.
The now extremely active Amigos paid a hefty
$11,000 per month in retainer fees to Deaver and
Hannaford, a Los Angeles-Washington, D. C. public
relations firm headed by Reagan confidante Michael
Deaver, which handled advertising for the Republi-
can presidential campaign. Deaver is now White
House Deputy Chief of Staff.
? Pressure on Congress by Reagan associates to "lend a
sympathetic ear" to the Amigos' current lobbying
campaign for the restoration of military aid and train-
ing for the Guatemalan military.
The Campaign Connections
An ominous bargain has been struck by means of an
exten~~ive network of connections between the Reagan
team and the Guatemalan extreme right, which include:
? J unkets to Guatemala by a "who's-who" of the Amer-
ican New Right, sponsored by Guatemalan speculator
and. right-wing activist Roberto Alejos Arzu, who
made his plantation available as a training site for
participants in the' CIA's Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
Those along on one trip in April, 1980 for example,
included top executives of Young Americans for
Freedom, the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority,
Young Republicans' National Federation, the Ameri-
c~in Conservative Union, Conservative Digest, and
strclh right-wing activists as Howard Phillips of the
? Allan Vairn is a Research Fellow with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.
This article first appeared, with some modifications, as a COHA report.
Readers interested in COHA's publications should write to them at: 1201
16th Street, NW, Rm. 305, Washington, DC 20036.
With an annual budget approaching a half million
dollars that is being generously allocated for influenc-
ing U.S. public opinion, Amigos has hired several
public relations and law firms including Washington-
based Patton, Boggs and Blow, and Robert Brewster
Clark, as well as Deaver and Hannaford to do the job.
The Deaver and Hannaford firm, whose ties to
Reagan may have been an important reason for its
selection, came under criticism in a recent Washing-
ton Post article for its possible violation of the For-
eign Agents Registration Act in failing to register
within 10 days after it began working for the Amigos.
The association of Amigos del Pais also hosted the
visit of a group of friendly U. S. Congressional staffers
at the beginning of last year. One of the participants,
Belden Bell, the coordinator of Reagan's 41-member
foreign policy advisory committee, prepared a report
for the Republican study committee outlining the for-
ces that threaten Guatemala's stability. Bell con-
cluded that "it is in the best interest of the United
States, as well as Guatemala, to throw our national
support behind this beleaguered country."
Number 12 (April 1981)
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Several other Reagan advisors have visited Guate-
mala in the past year, including Roger Fontaine,
National Security Council assistant for Latin
American affairs and retired Lt. Gen. Daniel Graham,
of his defense advisory committee, who also visited
El Salvador for President Reagan. Another top aide
to Fontaine's boss, NSC chief Richard Allen, visited
Guatemala City just before the election.
Fontaine, who is an established hard-liner in regional
matters, is the former director of Latin American
Studies at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, perhaps the nation's most conservative
academic-activists center for Latin American affairs.
He bolstered Guatemalan hopes in an interview pub-
lished in the Miami Herald this past July where he was
quoted as saying, "It's pretty clear that Guatemalans
will be given what aid they need in order to defend
themselves against an armed minority which is aided
and abetted by Cubans."
Roger Fontaine
leaders of moderate opposition parties such as the Chris-
tian Democratic and Social Democratic Parties-all per-
ceived to be "communists" by the ultra-right, who define
basic reforms-social and economic-as an irreversible
step towards Moscow.
The daily body counts have been estimated at 30 or 40,
although one report recently received from a hospital
morgue suggests the figure may be at least twice as high.
Guatemalan government spokesmen have blamed the
violence on clashes between extremist right and left-wing
groups operating entirely out of the government's control.
Sources close to the Lucas Garcia regime report, how-
ever, that the deathsquads are staffed and directed by the
Guatemalan Army and police under the command of
President Lucas, Interior Minister Donald Alvarez Ruiz,
and a group oftop-ranking generals, with the assistance of
Lucas's right-hand man, Colonel Hector Montalban, and
national Chief of Police, Colonel German Chupina.
Private businessmen provide the payrolls for the squads,
and often assist in "compiling" the lists of troublesome
labor, professional and political leaders as well as other
suggested victims.
Cotton grower Raul Garcia Granados-a leader of the
Guatemalan right who is the brother of Lucas's Chief of
Staff and co-owner with Lucas of an estate in the northern
Franja Transversal region-traces the lineage of the cur-
rentdeathsquads back through four administrations tothe
late 1960s.
"Of course when they were organized, they were organ-
ized under the patronage and the approval of the govern-
ment and the army," he said in a transcribed interview.
"They have lists of people that are suspected to be
communists of whatever kind, and they kill them. It's a
war, you see, a war between the communists and the anti-
communists. They [the deathsquads] have the sympathy of
most of the Guatemalan people."
? Comments by Reagan advisors in defense of "death-
squad" activities.
? And campaign contributions-solicited by the
Reagan staff-from American businessmen and land-
owners in Guatemala. While in Guatemala there were
repeated references by high Guatemalan government
and financial figures of illegal contributions from
Guatemalan citizens being funneled to the Reagan
campaign through a California entity.
The Deathsquads
Guatemala's deathsquads with such names as "Secret
Anti-Communist Army" and "Eye for an Eye" specialize in
"disappearances" of their political opponents, routine tor-
ture,and high-noon machine-gun executions in downtown
Guatemala City as well as the country's outlying provinces.
The victims are typically students, priests, labor leaders,
journalists, teachers, peasant activists and members and
Number 12 (April 1981)
One U.S. businessman who in the past has worked with
the CIA in bringing about the 1954 coup which launched
Guatemala's current succession of right-wing military
governments, boasts of being shown Colonel Chupina's
files on union members and political leaders from which
the names of victims are drawn for compilation into death-
squad "hit lists".
Government control of the deathsquads, long an open
secret in the top echelons of Guatemalan society, was ex-
posed this September in devastating detail by a man who
served for four years as one of the regime's chief apologists.
Elias Barahona, former press secretary to Interior
Minister Alvarez Ruiz, who controls the national police,
fled the country, declared he had become a member of the
EGP (Ejercito Guerrillero del Pueblo) ananti-government
guerrilla group, and in a Panama City press conference
issued a 15-page statement detailing how Lucas and the
generals run the deathsquads from the fourth floor of the
National Palace Annex. He listed the addresses of houses
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used b}' the government for detention and torture of its
kidnap victims.
Although the Guatemalan authorities attempted to deny
this r~:port, Barahona's credibility was inadvertently con-
firmed in October when Lucas's Chief of Staff, Jorge
Garcia Granados, sand in the writer's conversation with
him, that the Interior Minister had in fact taken Barahona
into leis confidence after receiving accurate information
from him about the guerrilla movement.
Vir~icio Cerezo, Secretary General of the Christian
Democratic Party, told a COHA press conference the same
month that last June., his party leadership was told by a
high Guatemalan military officer it was being placed on the
death list because "if ~~ou are against the government, you
are a communist."
In February 1981, Amnesty International released an
extensive report on massive human rights violations in
Guatemala, attributing nearly 6,000 deaths to the Lucas
Garcia ,government in less than three years. The victims
include trade union leaders, teachers, university students,
peasant community le;aders, and Catholic clergymen and
social workers.
De~~piite such mounting evidence, and the near-universal
recognition that Guatemala is one of the worst human
rights violators in the; entire world, both Arano Osorio,
know n as "the butcher of Zacape,"and former Guatemalan
vice-F resident Mario Sandoval Alarcon, generally con-
sidered high commander of the deathsquads, were invited
to the Reagan inauguration.
Sandc-val and Friends
Even before the current government took office,
Guatemalan officials rejected military aid in 1977 in protest
over the Carter administration's criticism of its human
rights record. Explaining this move, a Guatemalan recently
told a foreign visitor "the U.S. has encouraged communist
takeovers in Nicaragua and EI Salvador. They won't do the
same here."
Businessman Roberto Alejos complained: "Most of the
elements in the State Department are probably pro-
communist-they're using human rights as an argument to
promote the socialization of these areas. We've gotten to
the point now where we fear the State Department more
than we fear communist infiltration. Either Mr. Carter is a
totally incapable president or he is definitely a pro-
communist element."
Guatemala's former ambassador to Washington, Julio
Asencio Wunderlich, in a speech to the Guatemalan
Managers Association last summer said: `These circum-
stances that we feel and live in in Guatemala have led us to
place our highest hopes in the possibility of change in the
U.S.policy with a change in the administration."
Hopes for Reagan
Stung by the U.S. arms cutoff and human rights
criticism-which has hurt tourism as well as the nation's
overall image abroad-and anticipating an upsurge in
popular unrest in the coming year, Guatemalan rightists
look to Ronald Reagan as their chance to cling to power.
They are particularly alarmed over the prospect that the
decision by the 1.8-million member National Education
Association to move ahead on the tourism blockade of the
country will even further damage that faltering industry.
Milton Molina is a wealthy plantation owner who is
reputed within Guatemala to have funded and ordered
deathsquad attacks on dozens of peasants and workers.
When asked about the squads in a transcribed interview,
Molina replied, "Well, we have to do something, don't you
think so?" Molina says he and his friends back Reagan
"one hundred percent."
One American executive who boasts of collaborating
with Colonel Chupina says bluntly: "Why should we be
worried about the death squads? They're bumping off the
Commies, our enemies! I'd give `em more power. Hell, I'd
get some cartridges if I could, and everyone else would too
... W by should we criticize them? The deathsquad? I'm for
it!" This businessman solicited contributions for the
Reagan campaign among his colleagues in Guatemala City
and traveled to the U.S. to lobby on behalf of the Lucas
government.
To the Lucas regime and the businessmen who support
it, President Carter's human rights policy was anathema.
Lucas called Carter "Jimmy Castro." Feeling increasingly
isolatE;d and betrayed by Carter State Department policy in
Guatemala, officials there chose to ignore Washington's
urgings that human rights violations be corrected.
The deathsquads' defenders base their faith in Reagan
on direct conversations with him and his top military and
foreign policy advisors. According to the Reagan fund-
raiser quoted above, Reagan told ambassador-to-be
Carrette, "Hang in 'til we get there. We'll get in and then
we71 give you help. Don't give up. Stay there and fight. I'll
help you as soon as I get in."
Number 12 (April 1981)
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The Reagan camp's courtship of the Guatemalan right
began in earnest with the December, 1979 visit to Guatema-
la of a delegation from the American Security Council, a
private, ultra-hawk U.S. military lobby. One of the consul-
tants on Guatemalan affairs for the ASC film "Attack on
the Americas"[see article in this issue] was John C. Trotter,
the notorious manager of Guatemala City's Coca-Cola
bottling plant franchise. Trotter has been implicated in the
deathsquad murders of a number of workers and union
leaders at the bottling plant and was removed from man-
agement by Coca-Cola headquarters after an international
union and church-led boycott of Coke protesting the situa-
tion at the plant in Guatemala.
Trotter is also a director of the Guatemala Freedom
Foundation, a pro-Lucas international lobby group
founded by Roberto Alejos, which is more extreme than
the Amigos del Pais organization.
Alejos hosted the ASC delegation and helped set up an
itinerary which included visits with President Lucas and
the Guatemalan military high command, helicopter tours
to inspect rural counter-insurgency activities, and a cock-
tail party with Guatemalan businessmen at Alejos's estate.
The delegation was headed by two Reagan associates-
retired General John K. Singlaub who has served as the
ASC's Director of Education, and Daniel Graham, the
former Defense Intelligence Agency head, who maintains
an office at ASC's Washington, DC headquarters.
As an advisor to Reagan, Graham retains his position as
co-chairperson for the Coalition for Peace Through
Strength, a Washington lobby composed of retired mil-
itary personnel pushing for a larger defense budget. The
Missouri branch of the Coalition met with Guatemalan
and El Salvadoran business and political leaders in
St. Louis last May. Among the Guatemalan visitors were
Manuel Ayau and Roberto Alejos. Ayau is a member of his
nation's most ultra-conservative party, the National
Liberation Movement, which allegedly is directly linked to
paramilitary deathsquads freely operating in the country.
He generally is considred to be the ideologue of the more
extremist sector of the business community, and is also on
the board of GFF.
Alejos and Ayau are now well-known figures in
Washington. On trips to that city, their highly-paid public
relations aides have arranged for them to meet with Con-
gressional staff and State Department officials in the hopes
of enlisting support for their poitical position.
Their publicity is handled primarily by MacKenzie,
McCheyne, Inc. of Washington, D.C. This firm received
hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Somoza gov-
Number 12 (April 1981)
ernment of Nicaragua for, among other things, running the
so-called Nicaraguan Government Information Service. It
also promotes the El Salvador Freedom Foundation,
which purports to be to the right of the Salvadoran junta,
and it openly arranged the April 1980 Washington press
conference given by Roberto D'Aubuisson. In the past two
years, MacKenzie, McCheyne has received over $250,000
from the GFF.
These Guatemalan emissaries are known to have been
heartened to hear Gen. Graham's statement, made during a
trip to Argentina last year, that "Carter's human rights
policy has had disastrous effects on America's relations
with Latin America ...and if Reagan is elected, the U.S.
would abandon the policy of throwing old friends to the
wolves."
Singlaub, the former commander of U.S. forces in South
Korea dismissed by President Carter for insubordination,
has good contacts with the informal network of radical
right-wing mercenaries who aid dictatorships around the
globe. Last spring, Singlaub was seen lecturing-wearing a
Reagan button-at "The Farm," the Powder Springs,
Georgia Para-military training school of legendary mer-
cenary and gunrunner, Mitchell Werbell, III.
In atape-recorded interview last August, Singlaub said
that he was "terribly impressed" at how the Lucas regime
was "desperately trying to promote human rights" and
lamented the fact that "as the [Guatemalan] government
loses support from the United States, it gives the impres-
sion to the people that there's something wrong with their
government." Singlaub urged sympathetic understanding
of the deathsquads, arguing that the Carter administra-
tion'sunwillingness toback the Lucas regime in its elimina-
tion ofits enemies was "prompting those who are dedicated
to retaining the free enterprise system and to continuing
their progress toward political and economic development
to take matters in their own hands."
As for Graham, he acknowledged during a Washington
telephone interview last year that he told President Lucas
Garcia that on his return to the United States, he would
urge the Reagan campaign team to provide for the resump-
tion of military training and aid to Guatemala as soon as a
victorious Reagan would be installed in office.
In private conversations, the Reagan advisors were even
more blunt. One high Guatemalan official who met with
Singlaub and Graham, and who later discussed the impli-
cations of the visit with his government and military col-
legues, said that the message was clear. First, "Mr. Reagan
recognizes that a good deal of dirty work has to be done."
The Reagan aides' advice and supportive comments
were the talk of official Guatemala for days after their visit.
Within weeks, deathsquad assassinations increased drama-
tically and there was talk in government circles of even
harsher measures. "In private they say all the time that
they're going to find changes in the United States policies,"
says one Guatemalan who meets regularly with govern-
ment and business leaders. "I am sure that if they feel they
are more safe, they are going to try to eliminate all opposi-
tion in the country."
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Th~. parade of visiting advisors continued. Roger Fon-
taine made at least two trips to Guatemala. Fontaine is on a
first-name basis with right-wing figures and keeps in con-
stant touch with theme by telephone.
Ge ne Friedman, former Staff Director of the House
Subc~~mmittee on IntE;r-American Affairs, and whose bias
in fa~~or of the Guatemalan government is hardly con-
cealed, was one of the priority people to see in Washington
in itin eraries arranged. by one of the five or six Washington
law and public relations firms working for Guatemalan
right-wing entities. Ire June 1980, an Amigos delegation
came to Washington and hosted a dinner for Friedman
even though another subcommittee aide refused to attend
given the nature of thE; hosts. Friedman later attempted to
stonewall the holding of another round of hearings which
would listen to opponents of the Guatemalan regime until
four out of the five Democratic members demanded the
hearings in a letter to Freedman's boss, Congressman Gus
Yatron (Dem.-Pa.).
Through the Amigos del Pais and Alejos's and Trotter's
Guatemala Freedom Foundation, a number of Guate-
malans also came to the U.S. to meet Reagan and his staff.
Both Amigos del Pais director Maegli, and Manuel Ayau,
chief ideologue and theorist of the Guatemalan right, have
conferred with Richard Allen, Reagan's National Security
Council head. Early last year, Alejos met with Reagan
personally in California.
"M r. 1[teagan was in favor of human rights as much as we
were," Alejos says. "We found in Mr. Reagan a more
responsible attitude from a country that will work with us
on a t~as~is of respect...I have personal respect and great
admiration for Mr. Reagan. I think your country needs
him."'Through all of these meetings the same understanding
emerged: the Guatemalan rightists and the Reagan
advisors found they shared the same views and had little
need to negotiate. "With the people we're talking to in the
Reagan administration," says Maegli, "we don't have
anything; to discuss."
The Deal With Reagan
As cles;cribed by Guatemalan and U.S. businessmen and
Guatemalan government officials, the bargain with the
Reagan forces has four key elements. First, there is an
agreement, as Maegli puts it, "to take our Army off the
blackl.st"-to restore weapons and ammunition sales,
supply badly needed spare parts for the U.S.-built
helicol~tE;rs, and make available fighter and cargo planes to
the Guatemalan air force as well as crowd control and
counterinsurgency gear to the army and police.
Under the administration's proposal fora $4 billion
foreign military cash sale credit fund and a $500 million
general economic support fund, it is possible that military
assistance to Guatemala could be given without any
Congressional review. This concern is so serious that, on
March 4, several Members of Congress introduced a
resolution calling on the Reagan administration to
continue the arms embargo now in effect against
Guatemala. The chances of passage in the conservative
Congress are slight. (The embargo has, in fact, only been
partial. In 1979 and 1980, Guatemala was able to purchase
$1.4 million in military equipment from the U.S.)
Second, a commitment has been made to resume
Pentagon training of the army and police, particularly in
surveillance, intelligence and interrogation techniques.
According to Robert Merrick, an American-born planta-
tion owner who was in close touch with Reagan advisors,
Fontaine promised him and a group of Guatemalan
businessmen that Reagan "would do everything he could
within the law to help train the Guatemalan police."
Third and perhaps most importantly, the Reagan
supporters have agreed to cut back U.S. criticism of the
deathsquads which the Guatemalan regime feels has so
tarnished its international political and financial standing.
"We understand that as soon as Reagan changes this
attitude," says Raul Garcia Granados, who has met with
Fontaine and other Reagan insiders, "we won't get the
pressure that we have from certain groups right now."
Garcia Granados says that while Fontaine explained that
human rights laws are already on the books and would
have to be honored in principle by Reagan, the Reagan
administration would do everything it could to see that
they did not work to the political, military or economic
detriment of the Lucas regime. "They don't approve of the
way that Carter ...was getting involved in all these matters
because of human rights," he said.
One former high Guatemalan official, now in exile, says
his former colleagues have been assured by the Reagan
people that the deathsquads will be able to operate without
adverse presssure from the White House or the State
Department: "They have the feeling that Mr. Reagan
would not denounce them and would not make it a moral
issue."
Finally, although the signals have been less explicit,
there is also the expectation in Guatemalan government
and business councils that President Reagan would
intervene militarily in the event that a popular uprising
threatened the Lucas government. "That's my feeling,"
says Chief of Staff Jorge Garcia Granados, Raul's brother,
"because of the kind of person Mr. Reagan is."
This promise is already in the works. Speaking in Miami
in ear.y March, Guatemalan vice-president Cot. Oscar
Mendoza said that his government "feels more tranquil
now." Acting Assistant Secretary of State John Bushnell
indicated at the same time that the arms flow to Guatemala
might i-es;ume soon. Jack Anderson reported that President
Reaga n has already decided the Guatemalan regime should
get U.!i. help.
In anticipation of such support, businessmen who back
the deathsquads gave their all for the Reagan campaign. In
addition to the more than $120,000 which Amigos del Pais
paid to the Deaver and Hannaford firm, other public
relations efforts by right-wing Guatemalan groups attempt-
ed to sway U.S. opinion concerning Central America, in
Reagan's favor.
Number 12 (April 1981)
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In the first six months of 1980, the Alejos-Trotter
Guatemala Freedom Foundation paid $35,000 to
MacKenzie, McCheyne in exchange for services which,
according to the Justice Department Foreign Agent
disclosure form, consisted of issuing one press release,
holding one press conference and distributing some news
clippings at a cost of $8,071.06. According to Alejos,
however, the Foundation's U.S. activities also included
developing and distributing Central America-related
"propaganda" on behalf of the Reagan campaign.
According to Merrick and others, American businessmen
based in Guatemala gave heavily to the Reagan campaign.
Yet a check of the names of more than 200 such
individuals-including several who said specifically that
Human Rights in Guatemala
On March 4, 1981, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs
in Washington, D.C. issued a report on human rights
violations in Guatemala. It concluded that Guatemala was,
along with El Salvador, the worst human rights violator in
the Western Hemisphere, noting that political murders
have escalated to more than 20 per day.
Most of the violence, the report states, is directly attribut-
able to the deathsquads. Primary victims include: political
leaders of opposing parties, including the Director of the
United Revolutionary Front and leaders of the Social
Democratic Party; journalists, fifteen of whom were assas-
sinated during 1980, while eighty more were driven out of
the country; teachers, more than 100 of whom were kil-
led in 1980; students, more than 200 of whom have
been murdered; labor union leaders, hundreds of whom
have been arrested, tortured and murdered; Jesuits and
other Catholic Church leaders, many of whom have been
harrassed, threatened and killed; and Indian peasants, who
have been the victims of massacres throughout the country.
The report concludes: "In the name ofanti-communism,
the military regime, together with a number of prominent
politicians, businessmen and military officers, is attempt-
ing to destroy all democratic sectors, including moderate
political parties, trade unions, peasant organizations, the
autonomous university, and religious groups, in order to
maintain their privileged position. The magnitude of car-
nage and senseless destruction is incomprehensible. The
Lucas Garcia dictatorship is a terrorist government which
is violently repressing all dissent and rejecting all legal and
peaceful means to solve Guatemala's serious social and
economic problems."
Most disturbingly, the report notes, the pattern of vio-
lence and repression throughout the country has notice-
ably escalated since the Reagan election victory, including
flagrant deathsquad activity.
Number 12 (April 1981)
they had contributed- against the list of Reagan donors
disclosed to the Federal Election Commission, showed no
public trace of any such contributions. The sole exception
was John Trotter, who through his wife had given $750 to
the Reagan primary campaign. One businessman who was
solicited by the Reagan campaign said explicit instructions
were given repeatedly: "Do not give to Mr. Reagan's
campaign directly." Monies were dircted instead to an
undisclosed committee in California.
Reagan himself was reportedly aware of the potential of
the Guatemalan connection. One businessman tells the
story of the wife of an Amigos del Pais board member who
attended a California fund-raising party with Reagan. "He
was standing there. .She said, `I represent 14,000
Americans in Guatemala,' and Reagan turned around and
said, `Get that woman's name!"
There is no apparent reason why the Reagan campaign
wished to avoid public disclosure of contributions from
American citizens living in Guatemala, since these are
perfectly legal. The much more serious allegation concerns
campaign contributions from Guatemalan citizens, which
are prohibited under U.S. law. Merrick, an ardent Reagan
supporter, said of his fellow businessmen: "They're laying
their money out, and I would say that the Guatemalans are
the ones who are really laying it out...l do know that they
are giving very heavily."
One government official tells of a meeting in the
National Palace in Guatemala City where Guatemalan
businessmen and government members boasted of funnel-
ing money to Reagan but cautioned all listening that the
connection was to be kept confidential.
Even before coming to power, the Reagan forces made
efforts on behalf of the Guatemalan regime. Last spring
when the Amigos del Pais were making the rounds of
Congress asking for restoration of the roughly $250,000
Guatemalan military training appropriation to the federal
budget-Nancy Reynolds, Nancy Reagan's former press
secretary and the current Vice President for public
relations of the Bendix Corporation (which has no plants
in Guatemala), called the office of Congressman Don
Pease (Dem.-Ohio), who is from a district where Bendix
has a major plant and asked that he "lend a sympathetic
ear" to Amigos del Pais members' plea for aid. "It's the first
time we ever got a phone call like that," said the
congressman's aide. "It's unusual in that an official
company representative usually doesn't call on unofficial
business." It was Nancy Reynolds who recommended
Deaver and Hannaford to Amigos del Pais.
A number of Reagan advisers have openly defended the
deathsquads and the Lucas government. Retired General
Gordon Sumner, former head of the Central American
Command and one of Reagan's top military advisors, said
flatly in a press interview last August: "The policy of the
Carter administration is to destabilize the Lucas govern-
ment, and there's no excuse for it. That is a government
that was elected by the people." Sumner also defends the
deathsquads, arguing that though the need for such units is
regrettable, "there is really no other choice."
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"Attack on the Americas"
A Critique
by Philip Wheaton*
"Attack on the Amt;ricas" is a 25-minute 16 mm. color
film produced by the American Security Council Founda-
tion fir the Coalition for Peace Through Strength. It
preserrts, relatively slickly, an extreme right-wing view of
political developments in the Caribbean .and Central
America.. Its themes are pure cold war paranoia: that the
Soviet Union is on the verge of taking over the world, that
in Latin America Cuba is doing this work for the Soviet
Union, ;ind that the iJnited States may in the very near
future face communist troops on the Rio Grande.
The fi lm, which uses extensive TV network footage, cost
upwards. of $1 million. to make, and a greater amount is
being budgeted for showings around the country, on local
TV st