The Secret Government: U.S. Involvement in Guatemala Death Squads

How the C.I.A. and Italian Mafia Worked to Overthrow Democracy

Assasination, International Intrique, Lies, and Deception feed the Secret Government

Though many Latin American governments have practiced the dark arts of "disappearances" and "death squads," the history of Guatemala’s security operations is perhaps the best documented because the Clinton administration declassified scores of the secret U.S. documents in the late 1990s.

The original Guatemalan death squads took shape in the mid-1960s under anti-terrorist training provided by a U.S. public safety adviser named John Longon, according to the documents. In January 1966, Longon reported to his superiors about both overt and covert components of his anti-terrorist strategies.

On the covert side, Longon pressed for "a safe house [to] be immediately set up" for coordination of security intelligence.  "A room was immediately prepared in the [Presidential] Palace for this purpose and Guatemalans were immediately designated to put this operation into effect," according to Longon’s report.

Longon’s operation within the presidential compound became the starting point for the infamous "Archivos" intelligence unit that evolved into a clearinghouse for Guatemala’s most notorious political assassinations.

Just two months after Longon’s report, a secret CIA cable noted the clandestine execution of several Guatemalan "communists and terrorists" on the night of March 6, 1966. By the end of the year, the Guatemalan government was bold enough to request U.S. help in establishing special kidnapping squads, according to a cable from the U.S. Southern Command that was forwarded to Washington on Dec. 3, 1966.

By 1967, the Guatemalan counterinsurgency terror had gained a fierce momentum. On Oct. 23, 1967, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research noted the "accumulating evidence that the [Guatemalan] counterinsurgency machine is out of control." The report noted that Guatemalan "counter-terror" units were carrying out abductions, bombings, torture and summary executions "of real and alleged communists."

Bill Moyers: The CIA had called its covert action against Guatemala, Operation Success. Military dictators ruled the country for the next 30 years. The United States provided them with weapons and trained their officers. The Communists we saved them from would have been hard pressed to do it better. Peasants were slaughtered. Political opponents were tortured. Suspected insurgents were shot, stabbed, burned alive or strangled. There were so many deaths at one point that coroners complained they couldnt keep up with the work load. Operation Success.

Roettinger: What we did has caused a succession of repressive military dictatorships in that country and has been responsible for the deaths over 100,000 of their citizens.

Moyers: Success breeds success, sometimes with dreary repetition. Mario Sandoval Alarcon began his career in the CIAs adventure in Guatemala. Today hes known as the Godfather of the Death Squads. In 1981, after lobbying Ronald Reagans advisors for military aid to Guatemala, Sandoval Alarcon danced at the Inaugural Ball.

Richard Bissell, another veteran of the Guatemalan coup, went on to become the CIAs Chief of Covert Operations. I looked him up several years ago for a CBS documentary. Cuba, 1961, seven years after Operation Success in Guatemala, Bissell was planning another CIA covert operation.