EX-CIA HEAD SAID CASTRO WAS NO COMMUNIST

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000500110013-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 9, 2005
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: March 28, 1982
• Content Type: NSPR

AP,T y j' lift 3Proved For Relea f}2WR/($'U9QL3/IYCfk.MEP91-00901 R000500110013-0
28 ;March 1982
head saad,,_Gistro was no comur~s
united press international
WASHINGTON A few weeks
after Fidel,Castro"A rise to power in
1959~ CIA .chief-,.Allen Dulles told
the-Senate in a secret, briefing the
Cuban leader. _did : not, have "any,
ccommunist leanings, " according to
a reportreleased-yesterday..
', He has certainly> shown: great
cot rage . Dulles said or Castro be-'
fore thee SenateForeign Relations
Committee on^ Jari; 26, 1959. The
committee, yesterday released a
900-page.declassified report on
hearings held. In 1959.
"We do. . not. think that Castro
himself has=any. communist lean-
ings," Dulles told the panel 25 days
after Castro overthrew dictator
Fulgencio Bastista~ ,"We do not be-
lieve Castro is in the pay of or
working for the. communists." : I
"We believe, however, that this,'
is a situation on which the commu-
nists could capitalize If there is not:
a moue to get'control of the situa-^, I
tion more fully than Castro has
control of it now.' - ,'
"American intervention there
at,this time, or even before, would'
have had a disastrous effect
throughout the whole hemisphere
and I see no alternative - that is a
,matter of policy," he told the com-
mittee.
Dulles was less generous about.,
Castro's brother. Raul, now Cuba's =j
defense minister,.and about Argen- 1
tina-born revolutionary Ernesto
(Che) Guevara, the head of Castro's'
agrarian reform program who was
killed' in Bolivia in1967
_,'His brother..is.more irresponsi-
ble," Dulles said. "This fellow 'Che'
Guevara, the Argentinian who has
been fightingwith him, we are.
rather. suspicious about him." Dul-
les also was less than complimen-'
tart' about Batista, who fled Ha-
vana- for Miami on Jan. 1, 1959.
"We felt that Bastista was on the~i
losing end of the stick weeks before;
it came to an end," Dulles said.
"In fact, an effort. was made;
through extradiplomatic. means,,i
quietly.. to see whether he would=;
not depart, and an effort was made s
to see if one could put in an inter'ini
government that would at leastf
permit negotiations with Castro.", '
t
"'He stayed on too Long,'sa that
was impossible and Castro -came
in," Dulles said, in talking of ?a de-
velopment replayed 20' years. lateta
when Nicaragua's Anastasio Soo-(
moza Debayle did not Ieave Mana-
gua until it was too late.
Approved For Release 2006/01/03 : CIA-RDP91-00901 R000500110013-0
 Approved For Release 2006/01/03: CIA-RDP91-00901R000500110013-0 STATINTL
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Guatemala as Cold War
RICHARD H. IMMERMAN
With the increasing accumulation of interpretive scholarship on
international relations following World War II, most episodes in the cold war
have been written and rewritten, evaluated and reevaluated. One striking excep-
tion, however, is the 1954 American intervention in Guatemala, which led to the
overthrow of Jacabo Arbenz Guzman's constitutionally elected government.
This article studies the antecedents, events, and consequences of that coup.
Analyses of hitherto unavailable archival data and of interviews with Ameri-
can participants in the coup who were privy to the covert aspects of the opera-
tion suggest that this event was a significant link in the unfolding chain of cold
war history. Writings to date on the overthrow of Arbenz tend to be short on
detailed documentation and analysis and to treat the coup illustratively. These
accounts depict the United States intervention in Guatemala either as a back-
ground incident in the escalating cold war, as an example of the inordinate in-
fluence of economic interests (in this case the United Fruit Company [UFCO])
on American foreign policy, or as a way station in the evolution of the Central
Intelligence Agency. These treatments fail to emphasize sufficiently that the
coup typified the foundations of cold war diplomacy, providing a model to be
emulated, and resisted, in subsequent years.'
' The most widely cited source remains Ronald Schneider, Communism in Guatemala, 1944-1954
(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1958), although more recent studies such as Cole Blasier, The
Hovering Giant: U.S. Responses to Revolutionary Change in Latin America (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), pp. 151-77; Max Gordon, "A Case History of U.S. Subversion:
Guatemala, 1954," Science and Society 35 (Summer 1971): 129-55, and Stephen Schlesinger, "How
RICHARD H. IMMERMAN is associate director of the Presidency Studies Program in Princeton
University's Politics Department. He is currently completing a book on the CIA's 1954 intervention
in Guatemala as well as collaborating on a biography of Milton Eisenhower and a comparative
study of the Eisenhower and Johnson presidencies.