disinformation | the cia fights for the right to violate human rights

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the cia fights for the right to violate human rights
by Preston Peet (ptpeet@cs.com) - December 28, 2000

Former Central Intelligence Agency Director (1993-1995) James Woolsey revealed during an appearance on the Fox News 'Sunday' show (December 26th 1999) that the rules governing how the CIA recruits its foreign assets should be loosened, highlighting the current barring of hiring human rights abusers.

"The CIA overseas operates under guidelines that were adopted in late 1995, which makes it difficult - not impossible - but makes it difficult to recruit people who are human rights violators as spies. Well, if you're spying on a terrorist group, everybody in it is a human rights violator," Woolsey said. Woolsey argued that President Bill Clinton should look at changing those rules, but a spokesperson for the CIA denied any hindrances from the current state of regulations. The rules as they are now stem from the murders of Michael DeVine, an American innkeeper, and Efrain Bamaca Valazquez, who was married to an American lawyer, by the paid CIA informant Guatemalan Army Colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez, in 1995. At that point, President Clinton cut CIA counter-insurgency assistance to the Guatemalan military, but did not cut anti-drug aid.

Working alongside, often almost entirely supporting, various dictators espousing anti-American values all over the world is nothing new to US 'intelligence' agencies. This is clearly evident in Guatemala, where back in 1954 the CIA assisted the Guatemalan military in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz. An article in 'Salon' magazine (March 5th 1999), estimated the "Drug Enforcement Agency has collected enough evidence to formally accuse no fewer than thirty-one Guatemalan military officers of multi-ton drug trafficking over the last decade."

In February 1999 the Historical Clarification Commission (formed as part of a 'United Nations'-monitored peace accord agreement reached in Guatemala in 1996) found, contrary to years of official denials, the US government has given money and training to the Guatemalan military they knew were committing 'acts of genocide'. The result of this aid, the 'New York Times' reported (February 25th 1999), "was an aggressive, racist, and extremely cruel nature of violations that resulted in the extermination of defenseless Mayan communities." The HCC chairman, Cristian Tomuschat, was quoted saying "The United States Government through its constitutional structures, including the CIA, lent direct, and indirect support to illegal state operations." An HCC aid stated that the "support aided the Guatemalan military and para-military units to engage in kidnapping, torture, and executions," and that this support continued even after the US Government definitely knew of these abuses. Tomuschat was also quoted by the 'New York Times' saying that up until the mid-1980s at least, US companies and Government officials "exercised pressure to maintain the country's archaic and unjust socio-economic structure."

The HCC found that the Guatemalan Government, and para-military forces were responsible for 93% of all the 42 000 reported human rights violations, 29 000 of which ended in disappearance or death, and that the rebels were responsible for only 3% of the violations during the thirty-six year war. The number of dead totals close to 200 000 people.

Stan Goff, a former US Special Forces soldier who helped train many of these dictatorship's armies around the world over the last two decades, writes for the 'Consortium News' (December 22nd 1999) of working on a security detail for Langhorn Motley, Reagan's special ambassador to Central America, during Langhorn's mission in 1983 to investigate what US taxpayers were paying for in Guatemala, besides "Aboriginal genocide, and the elimination of Bolshevik schoolteachers."

That says it all: What are US Foreign Aid taxes spent on, other than genocide, and human rights violations? Imposing a Drug War-driven, violence perpetuating, corporate version of democracy upon the rest of the world?

Call To Action For Guatemala
Though this is all truth here at this site, and was a good idea, it is too late to flood the White House with emails and calls to tell President Clinton to support the Commission's finding in Guatemala, as his trip is long over (March 1999). This is an example of the efforts used by some who have been, and still are trying to bring attention to what the US has been busy supporting outside of its borders.

Passing Of Laws For Human Rights Violators Will Not Help National Reconciliation
This is an odd position for 'Amnesty International' to take in this 1996 press release stating their opposition to any plans for laws offering amnesty to anyone who committed acts of human rights abuses. Their position makes senses though, considering that any amnesty will deny the families of those disappeared the opportunity perhaps to ever know what happened to their missing loved ones. All 29 000 or more who 'disappeared'.

Congressmen Calls For Hearings Over Guatemalan Truth Commission Findings
US Congressman Bill Delahunt, (D-Mass.) called for hearings in February 1999 after the Truth Commission released its report on Guatemalan human rights violations and abuses. Calling attention to the fact that it had found ample evidence of US involvement in one way or many others, Delahunt wanted to get to the bottom of it all. What is the word since then you ask? I wonder the same, what has happened since this press release of March 9th 1999?

Rep. Lantos Introduces Human Rights Information Act
Why are these guys and gals having to pass Acts of Congress to release this material? What sorts of secrets, and whose secrets, are being hidden within this classified material dealing with murder, rape, kidnapping, pillaging, torture, drug trafficking, and all sorts of other unmentionable heinous crimes? Will the public in Guatemala ever find out the truth, or will we here in the US who paid for these policies? Probably not. As soon as a bill begins to be passed, loopholes are discovered, or written into the bill itself, to help hide the truth, instead of revealing it. Happens all the time in the US political theater.

Agent 'Scrub'
This is a short list of articles from mainstream news sources on the CIA breaking off ties to over one thousand agents and assets overseas whose crimes out-weighed their usefulness, finally, after no one knows how much work they actually did for the Agency.

CIA Turns To Boutique Operations, Covert Action Against Terrorism, Drugs, Arms
Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fl.) is the "first chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who is a former CIA case officer," states this 1997 'Washington Post' newspaper article. The author remarks that the toppling of the Iranian and Guatemalan governments, plotted, financed, and carried out by the CIA, were bragging points for the agencies for years, "fostering an impression, even among top policy makers and non-professional CIA directors, that the agency could get rid of whatever leaders and government it wished."

Guatemala: Genocide, And Drug Trafficking Too
Here is the 'Salon' magazine piece detailing the rampant drug dealing and human rights abuses carried out by the Guatemalan military to this day. The top judge was blown up in 1994, and since then the military has been the law of the land, thanks to the helping hand of the CIA. What a surprise.

Human Rights Abuses Must Be Reported
Here the 'Baltimore Sun' newspaper points out that even though the Commission's report on human rights abuse in Guatemala was a good thing, it was reporting on past events. Now we in the US, as taxpayers, need to be sure we know what our money is being spent on. Now, today, in places like Colombia, Mexico, and many other countries too. It is not just the spy cell infiltrators our spies work with, it is not so noble. Our spies work with whoever is good for the economy, their economy, the corporate economy.

Still Seeing Red In Colombia
Many CIA "officers still maintain warm relationships with rightist military forces worldwide that are engaging in widespread human rights abuses," states this article by Fred Smyth, of the 'Progressive' (June 1998), covering a number of instances of CIA intervention in Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, and the abuses committed by some of the CIA's allies and assets.

Inside US Counter-Insurgency: A Soldier Speaks
Stan Goff served in the US military for 2 decades, much of that time training third world armies, in counter-insurgency states this article's preamble from consortiumnews.com (December 22nd 1999). Goff details some of his first-hand experiences and impressions involving US interventionist plots and policies.

Radio Nederlands: Guatemala
This is a great site, dedicated to bring attention to the plight of the Guatemalan people and the oppression they've had to live under for so long, due in large part to outside intervention on the part of big, fat-cat US corporations and their lackeys in the CIA. They don't get in to the CIA angle too much here, preferring to focus more on the human faces that were disappeared by military and para-military forces throughout the more than thirty-five years of civil war.

Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team: Guatemala
The aim of this team was to collaborate with, and to establish terms of an agreement between them for said collaboration, the Guatemalan Forensic team in exhuming, and identifying the bodies of those killed and buried in human rights violation under investigation in Guatemala by the 'Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation'.

Guatemala: Memory Of Silence
A report of the 'Commission for Historical Clarification', these conclusions and recommendations were released in February 1999, on the investigation into the human rights violations, the horrors and madness that went on in Guatemala. Take a good long look around. Much of the information comes from de-classified US documents, but that does not mean that the US is by any means innocent in the findings of the Commission. This is a detailed report on what US tax dollars go to support. Check out the easy to read graphs, and maps in the appendices.

Guatemala: State Of Impunity
'Amnesty International' report covering the period from 1994 through 1996, investigating reports of human rights abuses in Guatemala, its findings, and its recommendations for the future.

Human Rights Information Act
'Amnesty International' is trying to get a law passed to get the US government to declassify more documents to help in the investigations of families into what happened to their loved ones and relatives in Honduras and Guatemala. The Governments and militaries of both countries had close ties to US intelligence agencies, and US aid and assistance. The bill would cover all human rights records since 1944.

Guatemala De-classified
Another tidbit from 'Amnesty International' on the cases of various victims of human rights abuses in Guatemala who know that the US Government is withholding important documents that could lead to justice in finding their attackers. Gut wrenching stories out of that hell hole.

Alternative Media Homepage: Guatemalan Student Initiative
Students are one of the most persecuted sectors of the Guatemalan society, yet they are some of the most vocal opposition to the military rule there, according to the information at this site.

Science And Human Rights Center
Here one can get to numerous different reports on human rights problems around the world, many focusing on the situation in Guatemala over the years up to today.

Global Exchange: Guatemala Recent Updates
Visit and read five different exposes on the human rights situation in Guatemala, the most recent being from October 1999. Worth a visit here to get a good overview of what's really going on, away from the not so prying eyes of the US corporate media machine. Also includes a look at the US School of the Americas mention in the Truth Commission report, among others.

Third World Traveler: Friendly Dictators
Many of the world's most repressive dictators have been friends of America. Tyrants, torturers, killers, and sundry dictators and corrupt puppet presidents have been aided, supported, and rewarded handsomely for their loyalty to US interests. Couldn't put it more bluntly.

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