JAMES LEMOYNE ARTICLE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE OF 5 JUNE 1988

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90M00005R000900060040-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 2, 2012
• Sequence Number: 40
• Publication Date: June 6, 1988
• Content Type: MEMO

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ECR RELEASE: SUN., JUNE 5 1988
Centerpiece selection
FRCM THE NEW YQRK TD 4M. MAGAZINE
Copyright 1988 James LeMoyne
World rights. (2,300)
The Washington Post
The New York Times f 5 E~~:
The Washington Times
The Wall Street Journal
The Christian Science Monitor
New York Daily News
USA Today
The Chicago Tribune
Date ~'7 A 14 81
THE HDNDURAN ARMY'S DEATH SQUAD: FEW MUCH DID THE U.S. KNOW?
(Editor's note: Between 1980 and 1984 the Honduran army, with
American support, uncovered and then systematically wiped out much
of the small Honduran guerrilla movement, writes James LeMoyne. His
report is based on accounts given by a former interrogator in a
Honduran army death squad who claims to have been trained in Texas
by the CIA, and a Honduran woman who in 1983 was tortured for 80
days in a secret army jail near Tegucigalpa, during which time she
says she was periodically visited by a U.S. official. In this
excerpt fran the June 5 New York Times Magazine LeMoyne tells how
their stories offer "a unique window through which to view the
most primitive and bitter level of the struggle between political
change and maintenance of state power now under way in Central
America." LeMoyne is the El Salvador bureau chief for The New York
Tunes. He has been reporting from Central America for The Times
since 1982.)
By JAMM LEMOYNE
He came into my office in San Salvador reeking of the
vinegar-tinged sweat of simple h>_uman fear. His eyes rolled to show
their whites. as he ' fisted that "t-hey'' were trying to kill him.
He said his name was lorencio ero d he wanted to tell me
of his work as an interrogator` in a Honduran army death squad,
which he said had tortured and then murdered approximately 120
Hondurans and other Latin Americans. He had been trained in. Texas
by the CIA, he told me. As a sergeant in the Honduran army, he
said, he had kidnapped and interrogated people, including an
American priest, who were then murdered. Horrible things'' had
been done to people in dark basements and hidden graveyards.
Intoning his words like a catechism, Caballero insisted again
and again that the Americans" had trained him not to murder and
physically torture people. But once he began working in an army
intelligence unit in Honduras, the admonitions of his instructors
in Texas were forgotten. He told me he liked and respected his
American mentors. But scrne_how.it had all gone wrong, even though it
had started well, even though "the Americans'' had good ideas.
Caballero wanted me to know that he didn't enjoy torture. He
thought murdering prisoners was wrong. He wanted out. But "they,,,
his former army colleagues, he claimed, were trying to kill him for
deserting then.
When Caballero came to see me more than a year ago the sheer
detail and conviction of his emotional account of secret jails,
murder and CIA involvement made it seen convincing. But it was the,
STAT
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word of only one man, and the Honduran government denied his
charges. It took many more months to find other witnesses, but.
eventually several American and Honduran officials and a survivor
of the army's secret jails confirmed much of Caballero's story.
They gave details of the "horrible things'' Caballero had seen and
done, things that neither Honduran nor American citizens would
condone if done publicly. "What Caballero says is probably true,''
I was told by an American official in Tegucigalpa, the capital of
Honduras
It'
.
s pretty damaging. "
Caballero told me that a young Honduran wanan named
could confirm much of his account -- because
he said
,
,
a prisoner in a secret army jail near Tegucigalpa where he himself
had "interrogated'' her and had watched his co-workers torture
her. 11 It was sad to see what they did to her,'' he told me,
shaking his head. "Ines Murillo suffered the most.',,
It took a long time to contact Murillo. After managing a
remarkable release from a secret jail in 1984, she fled from
Honduras to exile. She admits that at the time of her ca
t
i
p
ure
n
Honduras she was a member of an underground Marxist guerrilla group
that carried out bombings -- and robberies to raise funds for their
revolutionary goals. In spite of her strong political beliefs she
does not appear to be a propagandist. She has not sought out
journalists and has refused to write a book about her experience.
As she spoke of her torture, in a five-hour interview in Mexico,
Murillo seared to serve as a kind of witness for the tens of
thousands of people who have "disappeared'' in Latin America and
for the dozens of victims of official death squads I personally
have seen in six years of reporting in Central America. Their
slashed, bullet-pocked, sanetimes raped and.disrembered bodies
showed -- but could not speak of -- the terror that had befallen
then. But Murillo could speak.
Cnly an occasional shudder or tear, usually when she recalled
watching someone else being hurt, betrayed what Murillo felt five
years after being beaten, electrically shocked, burned, starved,
exposed, threatened, stripped naked and sexually molested for 80
days. She said Caballero was one of her torturers, a word he never
used to describe the "interrogation'' he carried out on a bound
and naked wanan.
Like Caballero, Murillo impressed me as a direct, credible
witness. Each lent strong support to the other's account. Piece by
piece, it gradually became clear that their story offered a unique
window through which to view the most primitive and bitter level of
the struggle between political change and maintenance of state.
power now under way in Central America. Other Latin American
governments, particularly those of Guatemala, El Salvador and
Argentina, have killed many more people than has the Honduran
government. But the accounts of Murillo and Caballero provide a
remarkably camplete and disturbingly human picture of how the cycle
of failed reform, guerrilla pressure and answering official
repression begins, not just in Honduras, but in much of Latin
America.
The weight of evidence indicates that between 1980 and 1984 the
Honduran army, with American support, uncovered and then
C tinued
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systanatically wiped out such of the small Honduran guerrilla
movement, as well as other rebel networks within Honduras
supporting-Salvadoran leftist guerrillas and the Sandinistas in
.Nicaragua. During those years in Honduras there were no trials or
lawyers to defend the accused. It was a period of rationally
directed state terror against.an identified enemy who was also
willing to kill to change the system of government.
The victims were not all Hondurans. Around the time Murillo was
seized, Caballero said, he interrogated an American priest, Father
James Carney, who supported guerrilla warfare and was captured
along with a group of 96 rebels who had infiltrated into Honduras
frcm Nicaragua after training in Cuba. Caballero said Carney and
nearly 70 of the captured guerrillas were executed. His account was
seconded by a Honduran officer. American officials have long
contended that Carney and other rebels died of "exposure- or in
combat.
" The CIA knew what was going on and the (American) ambassador
(John D. Negroponte, now deputy assistant to the president for
national security affairs) canplained sanetimes. But most of the
time they'd look the other way,'' said one American official who,
like almost all officials quoted in this article, spoke on the
condition that he not be named. The CIA refused to carment on the
events described here, saying through a spokesman that the agency
would not cament "on intelligence matters. ''
Caballero, who had already received U.S. training, says he was
among the first of those recruited to serve in a new unit known as
Battalion 316, which was organized by a Honduran army colonel,
Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, with CIA support.
1'I was taken to Texas with 24 others for six months between
1979 and-1980,'' Caballero told me. It was there, he said, the
Americans "taught me interrogation in order to end physical
.torture in Honduras. They taught us psychological methods -- to
study the fears and weaknesses of a prisoner. Make him stand up,
don't let him sleep, keep him naked and isolated, put rats and
cockroaches in his cell, give him bad food, serve him dead animals,
throw cold water on him, change the temperature.''
Occasionally, an American CIA agent visited the hidden jail
where he worked, Caballero says, and was given edited interrogation
reports on prisoners. It is unclear how much he knew of the
torture. The Americans didn't accept physical torture, they
didn't accept kidnapping -- they said to arrest people using a
judicial order,'' Caballero said. But guerrillas don't wait there
with a pen to sign a judicial order. Our camiander ordered us to
kill than. We hid people from the Americans, interrogated than,
then gave than to a death squad to kill.,,
Murillo entered Honduras' secret jails on March 13, 1983, when a
Honduran army death squad seized her and a friend in the northern
town of Cholcma. She was 24 years old. Murillo admits she used a
false name and carried false documents, because she was, in fact,
an underground organizer and spy for a Honduran Marxist guerrilla
group known as the Lorenzo Zelaya Popular Revolutionary Caimand.
- She says her disappearance began when assailants forced her into
a truck, blindfolded her, then raced through the night to a secret
army jail in the basement of a residential house in the town of San
Pedro Sula. The torture began irrrnediately. Her kidnappers threw her
C ntnued
%.3.
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STAT
into a small basanert cell, she says, stripped her naked and
demanded that she tell than about her work as ,~a subversive.-It
A man began to torture her methodically with electric shocks.
The device he used, he informed her, was a light cord that he had
cut to expose the two bare wires at the end. He would plug the cord
into the wall and stick the two live wires on her body until she
talked, he said.
For the first time in an-hour of talking, a tear escapes from
Murillo's eyes as she remanbers. "I smelled smoke and realized i
was burning from the singes of the shocks. They said they would
torture me until I went mad. I didn't believe than. But then they
spread my.legs and stuck the wires on my genitals.-''
In 1983, during the months that Murillo was.imprisoned'and
tortured, she says an American official periodically visited her
secret jail, confirming an account first given to me by Caballero
almost a year earlier. Because she was blindfolded, she never saw
him. The American was never there when she was tortured, Murillo
says., supporting Caballero's explanation that the rule was to
conceal gross torture and murder from the CIA. But Murillo says she
does not believe the CIA could fail to have known what was going on.
After 35 days in her first jail in San Pedro Sula Murillo was
moved to a second hidden prison near Tegucigalpa, where Caballero
says he repeatedly "interrogated'' her. There her torture became
more refined. Both she and Caballero say American-style
11 psychological " methods were then the preferred form. Murillo
says Caballero and other interrogators gave her raw dead birds and
rats for dinner, threw freezing water on her naked body every half
hour for extended periods and made her stand for hours without
sleep and without being allowed to urinate.
Not only strength, but the perseverance of her family seen to
have saved Muri11o's life. Her father, Cesar Augusto Murillo, once
served in a branch of the Honduran military where he met many
officers. Murillo says that when she finally broke under torture
she told her captors her real name. Cie. of than '1 immediately said:
My God, I know your father." But the torture continued.
Mr. Murillo guessed that his daughter was in a secret jail and,
according to ms. Murillo, let it be known he would pay for
information on her whereabouts. A soldier contacted him and, for a
bribe, told him where. his daughter was held. The soldier, ms.
Murillo says, also revealed the name and phone number of a man the
informant said was the CIA agent who visited the secret jail.
According to Murillo, her father told senior Honduran and
American officials that he would publish the information if his
daughter was not released. His threat sesned to have worked. Eighty
days after she was sei
ed M
ill
'
z
ur
o
s captors suddenly took her to a
Honduran court. The judge quickly reincarcerated her as a carrion
detainee in a regular jail. She knew that being placed in a public
prison meant she had been allowed to live. She was never convicted
of any crime, she says, and about ~13 months later was allowed to go
into exile.
Through several sources I learned the name of the AmericanT
suspected of being the CTA officer. when asked, the CIA would not
carment on whether the man worked for the agency or on whether any
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cut off all American financial assistance for training foreigns
policemen, although it allowed the CIA to maintain contacts with
police forces. In 1985 Honduras, along with El Salvador, was given
a special waiver, which permitted American military aid to its
police and intelligence units.
Caballero, now a refugee living in Canada, says he no longer
thinks the official killing -worked.'' He says he watched his
fellow soldiers slowly lose all, sense of morality and discipline as
they tortured people and ordered their deaths.
Murillo says her experience has convinced her not to return to
Honduras as a guerrilla. But she,
" too, doubts the repression there
worked.'' After hours of talking her voice became hard:
.,The enany has taught me that you have to be very cold, very
rational, very ordered. Between 100 and 150 of us have been killed.
They killed very beautiful, decent people who cared for our
country. But there will always be people as crazy as me, willing to
fight. War will curie. we wi11 learn, as you keep hitting us, and we
will became hardened and.very, very tough. we will see a damned
gringo American and we will blast him.''
It may be that Murillo is wrong, that her judgment is swayed by
her ideology and by the anger, mourning and hate she feels after
being tortured and having friends killed. And it may also be that
having experimented with state terror Hondu
l
e United States had been accused of torture and killing Cbn
in 1974, after several-Latin American police forces trained by
2
of its agents ever visited secret jails in Honduras. Several
? Honduran and American officials, however, say. that the American wa
a CIA officer and that he was sent out of Honduras shortly after
his identity and, perhaps, his work were revealed..
l now rethink
and change its ways L.".3 wi
.
Or it may be that Murillo'and Caballero are right. It may be not
only that state terror did not "work'' in Honduras, but that it
marked the beginning there of the cycle of failed reform and
repression that already afflicts much of the rest of Latin America.
-0-
Copyright 1988 James LeMoyne
Excerpted from The New York Times Magazine
Distritt_:ted by Sp vial Features/Syndication Sales
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