Days before Salvador Allende’s confirmation as Chile’s president in 1970, US President Richard Nixon met with a rightwing Chilean media mogul to discuss blocking the socialist leader’s path to the presidency, newly declassified documents have revealed. The documents, published in a new Spanish edition of the Pinochet files by archivist and writer Peter Kornbluh, include Nixon’s agenda for 15 September 1970, which shows a meeting in the Oval Office with Agustín Edwards, the owner of the conservative El Mercurio media group. A day earlier, Edwards had met CIA director Richard Helms. Notes from that conversation detail the media baron’s observations on various members of the military, prompting Nixon to request a “gameplan” for a coup that would prevent Allende’s inauguration. Allende had won a slender victory over rival Jorge Alessandri in presidential elections, but with no clear majority, the electoral system at the time required congress to ratify the candidate who would form a government. In secret, and with the support of President Nixon’s White House, a plan was hatched for the military to seize power, dissolve congress and block Allende’s inauguration. Alongside munitions and payments, Edwards conveyed the military’s demands for “clear and specific guarantees” as well as “assurances they would not be abandoned and ostracized”, according to a memorandum entitled “Conversation with Agustín Edwards, Owner of El Mercurio Chilean Newspaper Chain, 18 September 1970”, which had previously been heavily redacted. “It is incredible that, 50 years later, we’re still learning key details of how the US were trying to block, thwart, undermine and destabilise the first elected socialist president in Chile,” said Kornbluh.

Novembre MMXXIII "November Who"

Films

Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) de Gordon Flemyng avec Peter Cushing, Roy Castle, Jennie Linden, Roberta Tovey, Barrie Ingham, Michael Coles et Yvonne Antrobus

Ripoux contre ripoux (1990) de Claude Zidi avec Philippe Noiret, Thierry Lhermitte, Guy Marchand, Jean-Pierre Castaldi, Grace de Capitani, Line Renaud, Michel Aumont et Jean Benguigui

Coup de foudre et Conséquences (Fools Rush In) (1997) d'Andy Tennant avec Matthew Perry, Salma Hayek, Jon Tenney, Carlos Gómez, Tomás Milián, Siobhan Fallon et John Bennett Perry

Au-delà des grilles (Le mura di Malapaga) (1949) de René Clément avec Jean Gabin, Isa Miranda, Véra Talchi, Andrea Checchi, Robert Dalban et Ave Ninchi

Clemenceau, la force d'aimer (2023) de Lorraine Lévy avec Pierre Arditi, Emilie Caen, Elizabeth Bourgine, François Marthouret, Serge Riaboukine et Arthur Choisnet

L'Argent des autres (1978) de Christian de Chalonge avec Jean-Louis Trintignant, Catherine Deneuve, Laura et Michèle Kornbluh, Claude Brasseur, Michel Serrault, Gérard Séty et Jean Leuvrais

Mort sur la piste (2023) de Philippe Dajoux avec Jason Priestley, Eléonore Bernheim, Olivier Marchal, Roby Schinasi, Adèle Galloy et Olivia Courbis

Sylvia Scarlett (1935) de George Cukor avec Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Brian Aherne, Edmund Gwenn, Nathalie Paley et Dennie Moore

La Cité sous la mer (City Beneath the Sea) (1953) de Budd Boetticher avec Robert Ryan, Mala Powers, Anthony Quinn, Suzan Ball, George Mathews, Karel Stepanek, Hilo Hattie et Lalo Rios

Second Tour (2023) de Albert Dupontel avec Cécile de France, Albert Dupontel, Nicolas Marié, Scali Delpeyrat, Jackie Berroyer, Christiane Millet, Philippe Uchan, Renaud Van Ruymbeke et Bouli Lanners

Seuls les anges ont des ailes (Only Angels Have Wings) (1939) de Howard Hawks avec Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell, Allyn Joslyn, Sig Ruman et Victor Kilian

Un pyjama pour deux (Lover Come Back) (1961) de Delbert Mann avec Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Tony Randall, Edie Adams, Jack Oakie, Jack Kruschen, Ann B. Davis : Millie et Joe Flynn

Le Couteau dans la plaie (1962) d'Anatole Litvak avec Sophia Loren, Anthony Perkins, Gig Young, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Régine, Yolande Turner, Tommy Norden, Mathilde Casadesus et Elina Labourdette

Garde à vue (1981) de Claude Miller avec Lino Ventura, Michel Serrault, Romy Schneider, Guy Marchand, Pierre Maguelon, Jean-Claude Penchenat et Elsa Lunghini

La Sanction (The Eiger Sanction) (1975) de Clint Eastwood avec Clint Eastwood, George Kennedy, Vonetta McGee, Jack Cassidy, Heidi Brühl, Thayer David, Reiner Schöne, Michael Grimm et Jean-Pierre Bernard

Deux Hommes dans la ville (1973) de José Giovanni avec Jean Gabin, Alain Delon, Michel Bouquet, Mimsy Farmer, Victor Lanoux, Ilaria Occhini, Guido Alberti, Cécile Vassort, Bernard Giraudeau et Christine Fabréga

JFK (1991) de Oliver Stone avec Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Oldman, Kevin Bacon, Laurie Metcalf, Jay O. Sanders, Michael Rooker, Sissy Spacek, Joe Pesci et Jack Lemmon

Le Juge et l'Assassin (1976) de Bertrand Tavernier avec Michel Galabru, Philippe Noiret, Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Claude Brialy, Renée Faure, Cécile Vassort, Yves Robert, Jean-Roger Caussimon et Jean Bretonnière

Le Fugitif (The Fugitive) (1993) d'Andrew Davis avec Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Sela Ward, Julianne Moore, Joe Pantoliano, Andreas Katsulas, Jeroen Krabbé et L. Scott Caldwell

Un singe en hiver (1962) de Henri Verneuil avec Jean Gabin, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Suzanne Flon : Suzanne Quentin, Gabrielle Dorziat, Hella Petri, Marcelle Arnold, Charles Bouillaud et Anne-Marie Coffinet

Doctor Who (1996) de Geoffrey Sax avec Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Eric Roberts, Daphne Ashbrook, Yee Jee Tso, John Novak et Michael David Simms

Séries

Doctor Who Saison 19, 20 Series 1, 3, 11, 5, 4

Castrovalva - Four to Doomsday - Kinda - The Visitation - Black Orchid - Rose - La fin du monde - Des morts inassouvis - Earthshock - Time-Flight - Destination: Skaro - Ark of Infinity - La Famille de sang - Smith, la Montre et le Docteur - The Day of the Doctor - Snakedance - The Star Beast - The Ghost Monument - Le Colocataire - La Chute de Pompéi

Top Gear Saison 20

A l'abordage ! - Ils ont roulé sur l'eau - Mission Camping-Car

Brokenwood Saison 8, 5, 4, 3

Quatre incendies et un enterrement - Dix petits héritiers - Tu ne tueras point - Un Noël rouge

Affaires sensibles

Les étonnantes enquêtes du bureau des ovnis - 1975, l'année de la femme - Caravelle Ajaccio-Nice : un crash secret Défense ?

Coffre à Catch

#140 : "Elles répondaient au nom de Bella" (avec Max MK) - #141 : Qui sera le futur Mr Money in the Bank? - #142 : Y'a R les amis!! Y'a R ! - #143 : Tiffany prend les rennes et Finlay prend la Trique !

Happy Days Saison 4

De l'huile sur le feu - Remise des prix : première partie - Remise des prix : deuxième partie - Le Jour J est arrivé - Les Mauvais Garçons - Howard inventeur - Le Chien de Fonzie - Ralphy a de sacrés ennuis - Le Baptême de Fonzie

Downton Abbey Saison 4

La Succession - Lettre posthume - Faste et Renaissance - Le Prétendant - Rien n'est terminé - Une vraie surprise - Dernières Festivités

Professeur T Saison 1

Anatomie d'un souvenir - Un poisson nommé Walter - Règles d'or - L'amour d'une mère - Sophie sait tout - Le fils dévoué

The Crown Saison 6

Persona Non Grata - Deux photographies - Dis-Moi Oui - Onde de choc

Spectacles

Prom 10 : Doctor Who at the Proms (2010) avec Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill et Matt Smith

Taratata 30 (2023)

La symphonie des jeux vidéos aux Chorégies d'Orange (2021)

Doctor Who at the Proms (2013) avec Neve McIntosh, Dan Starkey, Matt Smith, Jenna Coleman, Carole Ann Ford, Peter Davison, Nicholas Briggs, Ben Foster et Murray Gold

Le vison voyageur (2023) de John Chapman et Ray Cooney avec Michel Fau, Sébastien Castro, Armelle, Nicole Calfan, Anne-Sophie Germanaz, Alexis Driollet, Delphine Beaulieu et Arnaud Pfeiffer

Doctor Who: A Celebration (2006) avec David Tennant, Murray Gold et Russell T Davies

Drôle De Genre (2023) de Jade-Rose Parker avec Victoria Abril, Lionnel Astier, Axel Huet et Jade-Rose Parker

Prom 13: Doctor Who Prom (2008) avec Freema Agyeman, Noel Clarke, Camille Coduri et Catherine Tate

Livres

Doctor Who le dixième docteur, Tome 1 : Les révolutions de la terreur de Elena Casagrande, Nick Abadzis et Arianna Florean

Les contes du vortex de Pepperpot x Friends (Pauline Cadart Serizel, Marie Valerio, Rémi Germain, Robin Brou, Manon Segur, Julien Cadart Serizel, Flavia Valerio et Gökan Martin)

Le docteur Who entre en scène de Terrance Dicks

Doctor Who le dixième docteur, Tome 3 : Les fontaines de l'éternité de Elena Casagrande et Nick Abadzis

Les Daleks de David Whitaker

Columna: LA UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DEL NORTE Y LOS 50 AÑOS DEL GOLPE MILITAR EN CHILE

Por Paula Corina Hernández.

El 3 de noviembre de 1970 Salvador Allende Gossens, se convirtió en el primer presidente socialista del mundo por vía electoral. El triunfo, se llevó a cabo en paralelo a los hitos históricos de la Guerra Fría, que perduraron desde 1947 a 1991, donde prevalecía una fuerte intolerancia frente a las diferencias ideológicas y políticas del Bloque Capitalista y el Bloque Comunista. 

Como era de esperarse, el triunfo de Allende en Chile, disipó en el Bloque Capitalista -liderado por Estados Unidos- una gran preocupación, que se manifestó en acciones antidemocráticas encubiertas de sus organismos de inteligencia en Chile y, posteriormente, el 11 de septiembre de 1973 en una violenta intervención militar al Palacio de la Moneda. Donde el presidente Allende se resistió y luego, según la dictadura, se suicidó. Pese a que su último discurso fue: 

“Mis palabras no tienen amargura, sino decepción y serán ellas el castigo moral para los que han traicionado el juramento principal. Ante los hechos, sólo me queda decirles a los trabajadores, que yo no voy a renunciar y pagaré con mi vida la lealtad del pueblo”.

Salvador Allende (1908-1973)

Es ahora, a 50 años del Golpe de Estado, que recordamos la responsabilidad de los países involucrados en el genocidio y que vemos la necesidad de su pronunciamiento con las disculpas pertinentes. Recordemos que el libro “Pinochet Desclasificado” de Peter Kornbluh, revela los documentos desclasificados por Estados Unidos que “muestran el rol que jugó el dueño del Mercurio, Agustín Edwards, en la preparación del Golpe, tras la reunión con el expresidente de EE.UU Nixon y con oficiales de la CIA en la Casa Blanca el 15 de septiembre de 1970, en la que informó las exigencias de militares chilenos dispuestos a participar en el complot”.  

Es por todo lo anterior, que el miércoles 6 de septiembre de 2023, se llevó a cabo la Ruta de la Memoria “Caminando Fui lo que Fui” en la Universidad Católica del Norte (UCN). Suceso que se enmarca en el sentimiento que suscitaron los hitos que marcaron la historia personal y social de la comunidad UCN en medio del Golpe de Estado y durante la dictadura.

A sólo instantes del encuentro, ya se daban intensas señales de los duros momentos vividos tras la intervención y depuración que ejerció la dictadura militar en las diferentes casas de Estudios Superiores (ES) en el país, pero en este escrito, rememoramos lo vivido en la UCN. 

Recordemos que la UCN nació en Antofagasta en 1956, con la latente necesidad de un ambiente propicio para la Educación Superior (ES) en la región. Fue el rector del Colegio San Luis, el Padre Gustavo Arteaga, quién lideró y materializó los diversos esfuerzos para este fin, en una ciudad marcada fuertemente por la tradición minera. Precisa la doctora en Antropología, Jimena Silva Segovia, que “Antofagasta como zona de sacrificios por el extractivismo, desierto y memoria remitía la sed de saber, que tuvo su ciclo de oro, donde de tanta precariedad del vivir mirando al fondo de la mina se pensaba que no saldría nada, pero que aun así en 1960 hasta 1973 tuvo una época donde todo parecía germinar: la educación, la plástica, la música y poesía”; el mismo avance que fue entorpecido por la barbarie de la dictadura. 

El régimen autoritario afectó radicalmente al país, a los chilenos y a las casas de ES. Erika Tello, Directora General de Pastoral UCN afirma que “fue clausurada la manera de decidir en el ejercicio de la ciudadanía en la que se pudiese dibujar el Estado y de buscar la sociedad, la UCN perdió de facto su autonomía con la designación de los rectores delegados y el diseño de carreras fue delineado por las preferencia del mercado”.

Entre tanto, los estudiantes, en palabras de la ex-integrante de la Federación de Estudiantes (FEUCN), Marcela Mercado, pasaron de ser niños y luego adolescentes durante la represión, donde los padres los protegían con el silencio antes que compartir el horror de una dictadura que “fue demasiado larga como para dar el tiempo de crecer y entender lo sucedido, pero que no duró tanto para poder combatir al real enemigo”. 

Precisamente, una de las carreras más afectadas por la dictadura en la UCN fue Periodismo, donde muchos docentes dejaron forzosamente las aulas y donde se dispuso su cierre en el año 1986, pero que tardíamente daría su reapertura en 1990. La misma carrera que nació en 1967, con sus periodistas fundadores Nicolás Velasco y Rodolfo Gambetti, y que fue encaminada por emblemáticos maestros como el escritor Andrés Sabella, que bajo su gran sensibilidad describió mediante la poesía la templanza característica del norte de Chile y que dejó, según la actual Directora de la Escuela de Periodismo, María Constanza Castro “anonadados a sus estudiantes por su singular forma de hacer clases”. 

Sin duda, uno de los sucesos más lamentables fue la cruda ejecución por parte de soldados del Regimiento de Antofagasta de los estudiantes de Periodismo, Nesko Teodorovic (24), su esposa Elizabeth Cabrera (23) y Luis Alaniz (24) mientras eran trasladados a la Base Aérea de Cerro Moreno.

Es por ello, que los 50 años del Golpe Militar nos recuerda el rol activo que debemos ejercer en la vigilancia, protección y fortalecimiento de nuestra democracia. La Ruta de la Memoria, como las diversas actividades de conmemoración de los 50 años, dan cuenta de la necesidad a nivel país de una real reconciliación, de la que cada uno de nosotros debemos ser parte. 

Léelo también acá:

“Henry Kissinger did not believe in the sanctity of self-determination. He didn’t believe in the sanctity of sovereignty for Latin American nations or the smaller nations of the third world. He believed in superpower might makes right – realpolitik,” said Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive (NSA) in Washington DC, which pressured the US government into declassifying Kissinger’s voluminous records. The veteran statesman did not want them made public until five years after his death.

“He didn’t believe in the sanctity of human rights either, which led him to embrace repressive authoritarian regimes as strategic chess pieces in the global chessboard of the cold war,” Kornbluh added

La sindrome di L’Avana ovvero gli strani malori accusati da alcuni diplomatici statunitensi presenti nell’ambasciata degli Stati Uniti nella capitale cubana e da altri agenti tornano alla ribalta. I primi casi di questo strano malessere risalgono al febbraio 2017 quando alcuni funzionari della rappresentanza diplomatica statunitense a L’Avana hanno denunciato alcuni disturbi come mal di testa, vertigini e problemi auditivi che subito furono ricondotti, secondo quanto affermato dall’allora amministrazione Trump, ad attacchi sonici condotti con un’arma ignota. Da qui il nome di sindrome di L’Avana.

Venerdì scorso, alla vigilia del 48° anniversario del colpo di Stato militare che rovesciò il governo socialista di Salvador Allende in Cile l'11 settembre 1973, l'Archivio della Sicurezza Nazionale degli Stati Uniti (NSA) con sede a Washington ha pubblicato documenti declassificati che rivelavano che la CIA si servì anche di altri Paesi nella preparazione dell'intervento di Washington contro il presidente cileno democraticamente eletto. Su richiesta della stessa CIA, infatti il Servizio Segreto di Intelligence Australiano (ASIS) installò un quartier generale segreto a Santiago del Cile (la capitale) subito dopo la vittoria dei socialisti e dei comunisti, dal 1971 al 1973, per svolgere "operazioni di spionaggio clandestino", in un nuovo atto dello "sforzo multinazionale per destabilizzare il governo cileno", secondo i documenti australiani pubbliicati dalla NSA. Questa cellula di spie australiane ha operato e coordinato agenti e team australiani insieme a diversi agenti cileni che erano stati reclutati dalla CIA nella capitale Santiago. Le operazioni prevedevano il reclutamento di risorse cilene e la presentazione di rapporti di intelligence direttamente al quartier generale della CIA a Langley, nello stato della Virginia. Secondo quanto riferito dai documenti, il ministro degli esteri australiano William McMahon autorizzatò l'apertura di questo quartier generale e la cooperazione degli agenti dell'ASIS con la CIA. All'inizio del 1973, l'allora primo ministro australiano, Gough Whitlam, eletto nel dicembre 1972, ordinò al direttore dell'ASIS di porre fine all'operazione in Cile, "preoccupato" dalla possibilità che fosse resa pubblica una partecipazione australiana "estremamente difficile" da giustificare, dicono i registri resi noti. Nonostante l'ordine di Whitlam, un agente dell'intelligence australiano è rimasto a Santiago del Cile fino a dopo il colpo di Stato militare guidato dagli Stati Uniti. Un altro rapporto ha anche osservato che il primo ministro "era ben consapevole dell'importanza di questa operazione per gli USA" e "era molto preoccupato che la CIA non interpretasse questa decisione (di chiudere la base) come un gesto ostile nei confronti degli Stati Uniti in generale o verso la CIA in particolare”. Un rapporto di Seymour Hersch nel quotidiano locale The New York Times, pubblicato nel settembre 1974, ha chiarito che la CIA preparava il colpo di Stato finanziando segretamente scioperi sindacali e corporativi in Cile per più di 18 mesi, prima che Allende fosse rovesciato. “Cinquant'anni dopo, si prosegue nella conoscenza della storia finora occulta, degli sforzi concertati e segreti per destabilizzare il governo democraticamente eletto di Salvador Allende. Il verdetto della storia su Paesi come l'Australia e il Brasile, all'epoca intervenuti in Cile, dipende anche dalla piena conoscenza di questo passato oscuro”, ha affermato Peter Kornbluh, storico della NSA. L'Australia ha declassificato questi documenti a seguito delle richieste di Clinton Fernandes, un ex analista dell'intelligence militare australiana. Fernandes sta ora cercando un'ulteriore declassificazione della documentazione storica sulle operazioni australiane in Cile, con i documenti ripubblicati ma non censurati. "Il governo australiano insiste sulla segretezza per evitare di dover ammettere all'opinione pubblica australiana di aver contribuito a distruggere la democrazia cilena”, ha dichiarato Fernandes alla NSA. (Rete Solidarietà Rivoluzione Bolivariana)

“How Pepsi triggered Allende’s fall: businessman who connected Agustín Edwards with Nixon passes away”

Cómo Pepsi gatilló la caída de Allende: muere empresario que conectó a Agustín Edwards con Nixon

Source: BiobioChile.cl (Spanish only)

This is what I’m talking about when I say I’m scared of a “competent” American president, when my country, Chile, is in the process of undoing the neoliberalism installed by the US as a “response” to Allende’s democratically elected socialist government.

Big American business was key in the military coup that placed Pinochet as a bloody dictator for 17 years in our country. They begged Nixon’s government to “act” and stop Allende because his socialist economic agenda would undermine their business.

About this last thing, the record states that in 1970 [Donald McIntosh] Kendall met with Nixon in the name of Agustín Edwards Eastman, owner of the El Mercurio newspaper, who was also the owner of the bottling plant of Pepsi in Chile. Allende had been recently elected and was preparing to take office with a socialist agenda, which endangered the commercial interests of Edwards.

Through a phone interview, [Peter Kornbluh] added that Kendall’s proposals to Nixon pushed forward a meeting between Edwards and senior officials, such as the National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, and CIA director, Richard Helms.

After said meeting, the president ordered the CIA to stop Allende from taking office or, if this wasn’t possible, to overthrow his government, according to documents published by the US National Security Archive.

Later on, Kissinger approved $250,000 USD to fund a political war in Chile, and the CIA finally granted almost $2 million USD to Edwards’ campaign to destabilize Allende, according to the book “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA” (2007) by journalist Tim Weiner.

What follows is known history. Allende was overthrown in September of 1973 and died during the attack on La Moneda - committed suicide -, which turned into a military dictatorship that lasted for 17 years.

In 1976 Kendall told the Times that he saw nothing controversial about connecting Edwards with Nixon and said too that he saw nothing unusual about his political work in general. In interviews, he argued that his relations with politicians, including as a donor to Nixon, was an essential part of his job as executive director.

I swear to God, after the coup in Bolivia last year and everything else that’s happened, living in South America in these times feels like being back to the 70s. And I’m scared of another “Pepsi”, another Kendall, another Edwards, and another Nixon.

(2021/04/16) CIA Assassination Plot Targeted Cuba's Raul Castro

[nsarchive.gwu.edu][1]

  [1]: <https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba/2021-04-16/documents-cia-assassination-plot-targeted-raul-castro>

# CIA Assassination Plot Targeted Cuba's Raul Castro

10-13 minutes

* * *

As Castro Retires on 60th Anniversary of the Bay of Pigs, National Security Archive Posts Declassified Top Secret CIA Cables, Reports from 1960

Agency Officials Willing to Pay Over $10,000 For ‘Fatal Accident’

Another Assassination Plot against Fidel Castro Was Part of Bay of Pigs Invasion Strategy

**Washington D.C., April 16, 2021 –** In the earliest known CIA assassination plot against leaders of the Cuban revolution, high agency officials offered the pilot of a plane carrying Raul Castro from Prague to Havana “payment after successful completion of ten thousand dollars” to “incur risks in arranging accident” during the flight, according to formally TOP SECRET documents posted today by the National Security Archive. The pilot, who the CIA had earlier recruited as an intelligence asset in Cuba, “asked for assurance that in event of his [own] death the U.S. would see that his two sons were given a college education.” “This assurance was given,” his CIA handler in Havana, William J. Murray, reported.

According to TOP SECRET cables between the CIA headquarters and the CIA Havana station, and debriefings Murray later provided on "questionable activities," the plot quickly evolved after the Cuban pilot, Jose Raul Martinez, advised Murray that he had been selected to fly a chartered Cubana Airlines plane to Prague to pick up Raul Castro and other high-ranking Cuban leaders on July 21, 1960. When Murray informed his superiors at Langley headquarters, as he later told the Rockefeller Commission on the CIA, “headquarters cabled back that it was considering the possibility of a fatal accident and asked whether the pilot would be interested.”

The cable, classified “TOP SECRET RYBAT OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE” and signed by CIA Deputy Director of Plans Tracy Barnes, and J.C. King, the head of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division, informed Murray that “possible removal of top three leaders is receiving serious consideration at HQS” and asked if the pilot had “motivation sufficient to incur risks of arranging accident during return trip” from Prague. To provide sufficient motivation, Barnes and King offered $10,000, or “a reasonable demand in excess of that” as well as to arrange rescue facilities for the pilot after the “accident” took place.

Murray discussed the proposal with Martinez in a car as the pilot drove to the Havana airport to fly to Prague. “Subj willing to take calculated risk but limited to foll[owing] possibilities which can pass as accidental: A. engine burnout on take off to delay or harass trip. B. Vague possibility water ditching approx. 3 hours out from Cuba,” Murray reported to Langley after the meeting. “Subj rules out engine failure in flight due [to] imminent danger [of] fire and lack of opportunity to save any passengers or crew … Doubts ability perform real accident without endangering lives of all on board.”

After Martinez left for Prague, the Havana station received a second cable, signed by Tracy Barnes, that rescinded the assassination plot. “Do not pursue,” it stated. “Would like to drop matter.” By then, however, there was no way to reach the pilot. When he returned, Martinez reported to Murray that “he had no opportunity to arrange an accident such as we had discussed.”

This “accident plot” was obliquely described in the special Senate Committee report on _Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders_ , published 1976 after an investigation into CIA covert actions led by Senator Frank Church. The Church Committee report identified the plot as “the first action against the life of a Cuban leader sponsored by the CIA of which the Committee is aware” but withheld—or perhaps was denied—key details, including that the would-be assassin was a pilot and the “accident” would involve a civilian airliner. Nor did the Committee publish any of the documents on which its description was based.

The TOP SECRET documents were later declassified as part of the JFK Assassination Records Act and obtained by National Security Archive senior analyst John Prados for the Archive’s digital collection, _CIA Covert Operations II: The Year of Intelligence, 1975._

### The Bay of Pigs Assassination Plot

The Bay of Pigs operation also involved a complex CIA plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, launched only a few weeks after the short-lived effort to kill his brother. In August 1960, the CIA’s director of covert operations, Richard Bissell, authorized what one SECRET EYES ONLY CIA memo described as “a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action.” The mission “was the liquidation of Fidel Castro.” As the top CIA official in charge of the Bay of Pigs operation, Bissell’s intention was to assassinate Castro and enhance the chances of success for CIA’s counterrevolutionary program to overthrow his regime.

In a filmed interview Kornbluh conducted with Jacob Esterline, the CIA manager of the paramilitary invasion, Esterline said that he had been asked to divert over $150,000 from his budget for unspecified reasons but had refused to do so until he was briefed by Bissel’s chief of security, Sheffield Edwards. After he learned the funds were designated to pay the mafia to arrange Castro’s assassination—using poisoned pills created by the agency’s Technical Services Division—Esterline protested to the head of the Western Hemisphere Division, J.C. King. “I said, ‘J.C. do you realize that this is going to make people take this whole thing less seriously if somebody thinks there’s an easy way out with Castro being killed?’”

“I thought it was absolutely amoral that we involve ourselves for the record in anything of this sort,” Esterline told Kornbluh. “Number one, I was just having trouble coming to grips with that. But number two, I thought it would also be the most self-defeating thing for the operation which was going to be [difficult] at best.” (Peter Kornbluh, [_Bay of Pigs Declassified_][2], pp. 264, 265)

  [2]: <https://www.amazon.com/Bay-Pigs-Declassified-Invasion-Documents/dp/1565844947>

The Archive is publishing these records as the Castro era in Cuba comes to a formal end. As the Cuban Communist Party convenes its 8th party congress on the 60th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Raul Castro is stepping down from his powerful position as party leader. “Just as the defeat of the CIA-led invaders at the Bay of Pigs marked a historic turning point for the young revolution,” according to Peter Kornbluh who directs the Archive’s Cuba project, “the official beginning of the post- Castro era marks a major turning point for Cuba’s future.”

## READ THE DOCUMENTS

[![document thumbnail][3]][4]

  [3]: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20616617/pages/1-p1-thumbnail.gif   [4]: <https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.html?doc=20616617-1>

1975-01-17

After the scandal about CIA efforts to assassinate foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro breaks in the media in early 1975, a former agent in the Havana station, William J. Murray, files a report to the agency’s inspector general on the earliest known plot in Cuba to kill a leader of the revolution—Raul Castro. Murray recounts how one of his recruited Cuban intelligence assets, a pilot, informed him on July 18, 1960, that he had been assigned to fly to Prague to pick up Raul Castro and other Cuban officials. After he informed CIA headquarters, Murray received an urgent, highly classified cable instructing him to offer the pilot $10,000 or more to motivate him to “cooperate in arranging an accident during the return trip from Prague.” The pilot agreed to “take a calculated risk but limited the possibilities which could pass as an accident.” In the end, no attempt was undertaken, and CIA officials rescinded the assassination instructions.

[![document thumbnail][5]][6]

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1960-07-21

Top officials in the CIA’s covert operations division sent this urgent telegram to their agent in Havana, William Murray, instructing him to encourage a pilot who is going to be flying Raul Castro from Prague to Havana “to incur risks in arranging accident during return trip.” The CIA would offer $10,000 and meet “a reasonable demand in excess of that” once the accident had been completed. The cable begins by stating that “possible removal top three leaders is receiving serious consideration at HQS.”

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1960-07-22

After conferring with the pilot just before he leaves for Prague, Murray reports back that “subj willing to take calculated risk” but limited to “possibilities which can pass as accidental.” The two discussed puncturing the tire of the plane to cause an accident, and even a real crash of some sort by causing engine failure which the pilot rules out because of “lack of opportunity to save any passengers or crew.” Among the options the pilot will consider is “vague possibility water ditching approx. 3 hours out from Cuba.”

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1960-07-21

After the pilot has left for Prague, CIA headquarters sends a second, short, two-sentence cable shutting down the operation. “Do not pursue ref[erence cable],” it states. “Would like to drop matter.” The cable arrives too late to alert the pilot that the CIA no longer wants to advance the assassination plot.

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1975-06-11

The official Rockefeller Commission appointed by President Gerald Ford to investigate CIA misconduct, debriefs William Murray on the 1960 plot against Raul Castro, as well as a more general discussion of the CIA’s role in encouraging efforts to overthrow Castro in the early 1960s. The memcon of the meeting records Murray as pointing out that “in many Latin American countries assassination is historically not an unusual form of changing government.”

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1966-06-24

The CIA’s director of security, Howard J. Osborn, sends a detailed summary to the deputy director on the CIA-Mafia collaboration to assassinate Castro before the Bay of Pigs invasion. The history starts with the authorization from the deputy director for plans, Richard Bissell, for “a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action. The mission target was the liquidation of Fidel Castro.” The report describes how Robert Maheu was used as a CIA “cutout” to approach mobsters Johnny Roselli and Sam Gold. It also describes how the CIA’s Technical Services Division “developed a pill that had the elements of rapid solubility, high lethal content, and little or no traceability” as an assassination device. Six pills were produced and passed initially to a Cuban official with mafia ties, Juan Orta. When he got “cold feet,” the pills were passed to a member of the Cuba Exile Junta, Anthony Verona, to pass to operatives in Havana. But, the report states, “Verona’s potential was never fully exploited as the project was cancelled shortly after the Bay of Pigs episode.”

half of my final book list for my modern comp exam. waiting on 20 more to be discussed between my advisor and i, but here is the start:

Revolutions in Latin America

Aviña, Alexander. Specters of Revolution: Peasant guerrillas in the Cold War Mexican countryside. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Bayard de Volo, Lorraine. Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs: gender identity politics in Nicaragua, 1979-1999. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Churchill, Lindsey. Becoming the Tupamaros: Solidarity and Transnational Revolutionaries in Uruguay and the United States. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2014.

Harvey, Neil. The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle for Land and Democracy. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.

Kampwirth, Karen. Feminism and the Legacy of Revolution: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004.

La Serna, Miguel. The Corner of the Living: Ayacucho on the Eve of the Shining Path Insurgency. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Marchesi, Aldo. Latin America's Radical Left : rebellion and Cold War in the global 1960s. Uruguay: Universidad de la Republica, translated by Carrara, Laura. Perez, 2018.

Moyano, Maria Jose. Argentina’s Lost Patrol: Armed Struggle 1969-1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.

Sarzynski, Sarah. Revolution in the Terra do Sol : the Cold War in Brazil. Sanford: Sanford University Press, 2018.

Shayne, Julie D. The Revolution Question: feminisms in El Salvador, Chile, and Cuba. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

Schlotterbeck, Marian E. Beyond the Vanguard: Everyday revolutionaries in Allende's Chile. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018.

Wickham-Crowley, Timothy P. Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes Since 1956. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993.

US-Latin America/Cold War

Belmonte, Laura A. Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

Brands, Hal. Latin America’s Cold War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.

D’Haeseleer, Brian. The Salvadoran Crucible: The Failure of US Counterinsurgency in El Salvador, 1979-1992. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

Graham, Jessica Lynn. Shifting the Meaning of Democracy: Race, Politics, and Culture in the United States and Brazil. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019.

Grandin, Greg. The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Harmer, Tonya. Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

Iber, Patrick. Neither Peace nor Freedom: The Cultural Cold War in Latin America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015.

Leogrande, William M. and Kornbluh, Peter. Back Channel to Cuba: The hidden history of negotiations between Washington and Havana. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

Schlesinger, Stephen and Kinzer, Stephen. Bitter Fruit: the story of the American coup in Guatemala. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Rabe, Stephen G. The Killing Zone: The United States wages Cold War in Latin America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Missing (1982), dir. Costa-Gavras

Criterion (DVD)

2 Interviews with Costa-Gavras

Interview with wife of Charles Horman, Joyce Horman

Interview with producers Edward Lewis, Mildred Lewis and Sean Daniel and author Thomas Hauser

Interview with director Costa-Gavras, actor Jack Lemmon, father of Charles Horman, Ed Horman and Joyce Horman

Pursuing Truth - interview with author Peter Kornbluh

In Honor of Missing featurette

Indicator (Blu-ray)

The Guardian Interview with Costa-Gavras 

The Guardian Interview with Jack Lemmon

Personally Political: a new filmed appreciation by filmmaker and actor Keith Gordon 

Archival interviews with Costa-Gavras 

Original theatrical trailer 

Image gallery

To this day, the legacy of Operation Condor haunts South America. The programme of imprisonment, murder, and terror that several dictatorial regimes collaborated on in the 1970s and 80s. SUBSCRIBE and join us! https://goo.gl/7vUgh0 Step Back is made possible by the generous contributions of viewers like you, consider helping at https://ift.tt/2bR9Kw6 If you liked this video and want to leave a one-time tip: https://ift.tt/2CJwBBG Check out a collection of books that are either Tristan's favourites or used to research Step Back videos at: https://ift.tt/2AC7WkV Step Back is a history channel releasing videos weekly that endeavours to go past the names, dates, and battles you might find elsewhere. It invites you to take a step back, consider the past and how it connects to today. We search for the quirky, unconventional, and just plain weird parts of our collective story. I have a curious cat account for anonymous questions for me: https://ift.tt/2BhhM9T YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: Let's Do Some Theory: Why Net Neutrality Is like Ice https://youtu.be/6nzWxXujyBs Did Columbus Really Discover America? https://youtu.be/PfcOf7-elRs What is a Paladin? https://youtu.be/j_vkLO-8e0k Connect with Step Back: Facebook: https://ift.tt/2mQlpvy Twitter: https://twitter.com/TristanPEJ Sub-Reddit: https://ift.tt/29gUtiF Slack: https://ift.tt/2G8MaZu Special Thanks to Kelly Barnes, and Benny Tan Music by 12Tone. Check out their channel at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTUtqcDkzw7bisadh6AOx5w Music from Jukedeck - create your own at http://jukedeck.com Photo Credits: CARLOS TEIXIDOR CADENAS Carlos3653 The Simpsons Tiomono Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-380-0069-37 / Lifta / CC-BY-SA 3.0 Desconocido Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile Museum of Memory and Human Rights Falerístico Archivo Hasenberg-Quaretti Camaratres Paraguay's Information Infrastructure Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Chile. Che Mella Sydney Morning Herald LBJ library Hugoshi References: Cecilia Menjívar and Néstor Rodríguez (eds). When States Kill: Latin America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror J. Patrice McSherry, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America John Dinges, The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents Lessa, Francesca. 2015. Justice beyond borders: The operation condor trial and accountability for transnational crimes in south america. International Journal of Transitional Justice 9 (3): 494-506. Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability RAÍSA GOMES DE OLIVEIRA. 2013. condor operation: State terrorism in south cone and the hegemonic role of the us. Journal of Scientific Initiation on International Relations 1 (1): 30-52. Zanchetta, Barbara. 2016. Between cold war imperatives and state-sponsored terrorism: The united states and "operation condor". Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 39 (12): 1084. https://ift.tt/2KSKO43 https://ift.tt/1ujsujI https://ift.tt/25jhbgy https://ift.tt/1u8xmxf https://ift.tt/2KU6rRH https://ift.tt/2tWeNBE -~-~~-~~~-~~-~- Please watch: "One Weird Trick to Re-balance the Supreme Court - CONGRESS HATES IT" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N039BdJ_FeU -~-~~-~~~-~~-~-

Documentos da CIA revelam tentativas de assassinar Fidel e Raúl Castro

A CIA planejou, sem sucesso, dois complôs para assassinar os líderes cubanos e irmãos Fidel e Raúl Castro nos anos de 1960, de acordo com documentos desclassificados que foram divulgados nesta sexta-feira, 16, pela ONG americana National Security Archive. Por ocasião do VIII Congresso do Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), que deverá marcar a aposentadoria política de Raúl Castro, foram divulgados documentos sobre um complô para fingir um acidente em um voo entre Praga e Havana e outro ligado à invasão da Baía dos Porcos, em 1961. Os documentos, seis no total e que incluem memorandos e telegramas, mostram as providências tomadas por funcionários das agências de inteligência, que incluíram a oferta de um pagamento de “US$ 10 mil ou uma quantia razoável superior a esse valor” para “incorrer no risco de encenar um acidente aéreo”.

O chefe da CIA em Cuba em 1960, William J. Murray, discutiu esse plano com o piloto cubano José Raúl Martínez, que trabalhava para a companhia aérea Cubana Airlines, que foi contratada para um voo charter para Praga, realizado em 21 de julho de 1960, e que em seu retorno a Havana traria Raúl Castro e outros membros do partido comunista. “O piloto, que a CIA havia recrutado anteriormente como um ativo de inteligência em Cuba, ‘pediu garantias de que no caso de sua (própria) morte, os Estados Unidos cuidariam para que seus dois filhos recebessem uma educação universitária’”, disse a ONG. A trama nunca foi executada porque o piloto “não teve oportunidade de organizar um acidente” durante o voo. Os envolvidos haviam considerado a possibilidade de um superaquecimento do motor em terra ou um pouso “a umas três horas de Cuba”. Murray havia recebido anteriormente uma contra-ordem sobrepondo-se à trama, embora ele não tivesse tido oportunidade de se comunicar com o piloto.

Outra tentativa, desta vez para assassinar Fidel Castro, começou a nascer semanas após o complô contra Raul Castro, ainda segundo a ONG. Em agosto de 1960, o diretor de operações secretas da CIA Richard Bissell autorizou “uma missão sensível” que exigia uma ação de gangue para matar Fidel Castro e “aumentar as chances de sucesso do programa contrarrevolucionário da CIA para derrubar seu regime”. Para a operação, a Divisão de Serviços Técnicos da CIA “desenvolveu uma pílula que tinha os elementos de solubilidade rápida, alto conteúdo letal e pouca ou nenhuma rastreabilidade”. Foram produzidas seis unidades que seriam dadas a Fidel misturadas com algum alimento ou bebida.

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A trama, que não se concretizou, “foi cancelada logo após o episódio da Baía dos Porcos”. A invasão da Baía dos Porcos, que ocorreu de 15 a 19 de abril de 1961, envolveu cubanos treinados e financiados pelos Estados Unidos para derrubar Castro, mas acabou fracassando. Peter Kornbluh, que dirige o projeto Cuba da National Security Archive, afirmou que, “assim como a derrota dos invasores liderados pela CIA na Baía dos Porcos marcou uma virada histórica para a jovem revolução”, o “início oficial da era pós-Castro marca um importante ponto de inflexão para o futuro de Cuba”.

*Com informações da EFE

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How much of your academic work on Cuban history covers the CIA / anti-Castro Cuban connection? That's an area of Cold War history that really fascinates me, but I'm not that well read on the details, just some awareness of operations and a few key players like David Atlee Phillips, Ted Shakley, etc. If you've got any book recommendations on that specific topic, I'll add it to my ever-growing reading list.

hey! answering this publicly in case these recommendations could help anybody else. this was my MA thesis actually, so here are some books that helped me a lot with shaping it. although if you really want to get into the nitty gritties, all the documents for operation mongoose and similar CIA plans are declassified and available online through (i believe) the national security archives! 

contesting castro - thomas g. paterson

that infernal little cuban republic - lars schoultz (who is a really sweet and cool person and this book is amazing)

back channel to cuba - william leogrande and peter kornbluh

sort of related but conflicting missions by piero gleijeses… this is more about cuba’s support of socialist revolutions worldwide and america’s covert response

with this topic, be careful of sensationalist popular press books… try to read books from academic presses only! i fell into this trap in undergrad and checked out a book called like “castro’s hidden secrets” or something equally as sensationalist and it was literally like a gossip rag with extremely questionable source material. but the above works and works like them are really great! 

Will US diplomats return to Cuba after mystery injuries? Near the end of then-President Obama’s term in 2016, the newly reopened US embassy situated on Havana’s seaside Malecón boulevard was a sought-after posting, with diplomats jockeying to serve in a country where American foreign service officers were making history as the US and Cuba repaired long frayed diplomatic ties. But late that year, US diplomats in their homes and hotel rooms in Havana began experiencing unexplained symptoms, such as dizziness and pounding headaches. These sometimes were accompanied by an unidentified “piercing directional noise” that sounded as if metal was being scraped across a floor. What caused their injuries remains a mystery. The State Department report, which was obtained by the National Security Archive research institute though a Freedom of Information Act request, concludes that the US government’s response and investigation into the so-called Havana Syndrome may have been botched from the beginning. “You see chaos, lack of organization, you see excessive secrecy, as the authors of the report put it, all of which compromised an initial investigation assessment of what was going on,” said Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst with the National Security Archive. Part of the secrecy surrounding the incidents likely had to do with the fact that CIA officers working under diplomatic cover were among the first US officials impacted by the incidents and the first to depart Havana. According to a timeline in the State Department report, the CIA informed the State Department in September 2017 of “its decision to withdraw its personnel from Havana for the foreseeable future.” The line is a rare public admission of a CIA station operating at a US Embassy, Kornbluh said. “The CIA doesn’t want to admit what everybody basically already knows, that they do have a contingent of operatives in most significant countries where they are trying to obtain intelligence,” he said. “Cuba and the United States have been in a spy versus spy confrontation since the time of the revolution.” Two weeks after the CIA pulled its officers from Cuba, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ordered a larger draw down of the embassy, according to the State Department report. Tillerson’s decision to reduce embassy staffing “does not appear to have followed standard Department of State procedures and was neither preceded nor followed by any formal analysis of the risks and benefits of continued physical presence of U.S. government employees in Havana,” the report said. “Of the many Department leaders interviewed by the Board, no one can explain why this has not happened,” the report said, before offering one possibility for why the State Department did not follow its own safety protocols, which is redacted in the released report. The cause of the diplomats’ injuries also stumped US law enforcement, lawmakers, scientists and the intelligence community. US investigators looked at the possibility that sonic weapons, neurotoxins, infectious diseases and mass hysteria could have been the cause. Canada said some of their diplomats suffered similar symptoms and also ordered a draw-down of their embassy in Havana. US diplomats in China and Russia reported similar unexplained sudden health problems, raising the specter that American government officials working overseas were being widely targeted. In December, a US-government funded study by the National Academy of Sciences said that “directed” microwave radiation was the most likely cause of symptoms observed in the affected diplomats working in Havana and China. The study did not say what kind of device was capable of blanketing diplomats with microwave, or what countries possess that kind of previously unknown energy weapon. Cuban investigators told CNN they did not agree with the study’s conclusion. “There is no physical possibility of a microwave weapon, penetrating hotel rooms, houses, causing brain damage without burning the skin, without burning other tissues. It from the scientific point, untenable,” said Dr. Mitchell Valdes-Sosa, of the Cuba Neuroscience Center, who has been coordinating a Cuban government task force on the incidents. Independent scientists consulted by CNN said that while there could be secret government programs they were not aware of, as far as they knew, there were no energy weapons that were capable of causing the damage described by US diplomats. The official Cuban stance has always been that there were no attacks. “There was not a single evidence of an attack. There were symptoms,” Johana Tablada, the Deputy Director for US Affairs at the Cuban Foreign Ministry, told CNN “It’s very easy to establish what didn’t happen and attacks did not happen. Most of the diplomatic community then and today remain confident and feel safe.” Cuban government officials complained that while they allowed the FBI to visit the island to investigate the issue, US officials have shared little of the information they have gathered and, at times, insinuated that Cuba may be involved in a cover-up if an ally, like Russia, were behind the incidents. Following the incidents and Trump’s reversal of Obama’s opening with Cuba, the US Embassy has become “a ghost ship manned by a skeleton crew” as one US diplomat, who served there after the draw-down and was not authorized to speak to the media, told CNN. The diplomat said that, following the incidents, foreign service officers working in Havana lived several people to a house for security reasons and usually stayed for short tours of six months or less, making it difficult for them to get their bearings or develop contacts on the communist-run island. The Biden administration has said they are reviewing all of the Trump administration’s changes to Cuba policy, including the decision to pull diplomats from the embassy in Havana. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been briefed on the diplomats injuries and would soon appoint a senior official to coordinate “continuing support to affected personnel,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price at briefing last week. Many Cubans who have been unable to visit family in the US since the incidents, are also hopeful that Biden will send US diplomats back to the island and restore services that had been suspended. Following the drawdown of the embassy in 2017, consular services in Havana have been all but cut off for Cubans seeking visas to visit or emigrate to the United States. Thousands of Cubans have instead had to travel to third countries like Guyana to apply for visas. Cuban illustrator Victor Alfonso Cedeño said he was turned down after he applied for an emergency medical visa from the embassy in 2020 so he could receive treatment in the US for a rare cancer he is suffering from. “The answer we got was they couldn’t receive the request because the consulate was closed,” he said “Even though it’s a medical situation, a situation of life or death. Through their attorney, some of the US diplomats impacted by the alleged incidents in Havana said they regretted that Cubans had paid a price for their unexplained illnesses. Mark Zaid, who represents eight diplomats and spouses that became sick in Havana, said that while he believes they were the victim of some kind of action by a US foreign adversary, Cuba was likely not directly responsible. “It’s unfortunate. I kind of look at the Cubans as second tier victims in this case. I know my clients, the State Department people who were there, they only have absolute praise,” Zaid told CNN. “They thought things were going so great down there and would only want relationships to normalize and improve again.” Source link Orbem News #Cuba #Diplomats #Injuries #mystery #return

CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents //

CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents

Edited by Kate Doyle and Peter Kornbluh

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 4

For more information contact: Kate Doyle or Peter Kornbluh at202/994-7000 or [email protected]

Washington, D.C. – These documents, including an instructional guide on assassination found among the training files of the CIA's covert "Operation PBSUCCESS," were among several hundred records released by the Agency on May 23, 1997 on its involvement in the infamous 1954 coup in Guatemala. After years of answering Freedom of Information Act requests with its standard "we can neither confirm nor deny that such records exist," the CIA has finally declassified some 1400 pages of over 100,000 estimated to be in its secret archives on the Guatemalan destabilization program. (The Agency's press release stated that more records would be released before the end of the year.) An excerpt from the assassination manual appears on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times on Saturday, May 31, 1997.

The small, albeit dramatic, release comes more than five years after then CIA director Robert Gates declared that the CIA would "open" its shadowy past to post-cold war public scrutiny, and only days after a member of the CIA's own historical review panel was quoted in the New York Times as calling the CIA's commitment to openness "a brilliant public relations snow job." (See Tim Weiner, "C.I.A.'s Openness Derided as a 'Snow Job'," The New York Times, May 20, 1997, p. A16)

Arbenz was elected President of Guatemala in 1950 to continue a process of socio- economic reforms that the CIA disdainfully refers to in its memoranda as "an intensely nationalistic program of progress colored by the touchy, anti-foreign inferiority complex of the 'Banana Republic.'" The first CIA effort to overthrow the Guatemalan president--a CIA collaboration with Nicaraguan dictator Anastacio Somoza to support a disgruntled general named Carlos Castillo Armas and codenamed Operation PBFORTUNE--was authorized by President Truman in 1952. As early as February of that year, CIA Headquarters began generating memos with subject titles such as "Guatemalan Communist Personel to be disposed of during Military Operations," outlining categories of persons to be neutralized "through Executive Action"--murder--or through imprisonment and exile. The "A" list of those to be assassinated contained 58 names--all of which the CIA has excised from the declassified documents.

PBSUCCESS, authorized by President Eisenhower in August 1953, carried a $2.7 million budget for "pychological warfare and political action" and "subversion," among the other components of a small paramilitary war. But, according to the CIA's own internal study of the agency's so-called "K program," up until the day Arbenz resigned on June 27, 1954, "the option of assassination was still being considered." While the power of the CIA's psychological-war, codenamed "Operation Sherwood," against Arbenz rendered that option unnecessary, the last stage of PBSUCCESS called for "roll-up of Communists and collaborators." Although Arbenz and his top aides were able to flee the country, after the CIA installed Castillo Armas in power, hundreds of Guatemalans were rounded up and killed. Between 1954 and 1990, human rights groups estimate, the repressive operatives of sucessive military regimes murdered more than 100,000 civilians.

  DOCUMENTS

Document 1: "CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals, 1952-1954", CIA History Staff Analysis by Gerald K. Haines, June 1995.

CIA records on assassination planning in Guatemala were first gathered pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in 1979. All of them were withheld on national security grounds at that time. In 1995, the CIA's historical staff "rediscovered" these records during a search of Guatemala materials to be declassified as part of the agency's "Openness" program. A staff historian, Gerald Haines, was assigned to write this brief history of these operations. He concluded that as early as January 1952, CIA headquarters began compiling lists of individuals in Arbenz's government "to eliminate immediately in event of [a] successful anti-Communist coup." Planning for assassination included budgeting, training programs, creation of hit teams, drafting of target lists of persons, and transfer of armaments. Haines writes that "until the day that Arbenz resigned in June 1954 the option of assassination was still being considered." The CIA, according to this history, did not implement its assassination strategy. But the declassifiers of this study, and other related documents, have deleted the names of the targeted individuals, making it impossible to verify that none of them were killed during or in the aftermath of the coup.

  Document 2: "A Study of Assassination", Unsigned, Undated.

Transcription

Among the documents found in the training files of Operation PBSUCCESS and declassified by the Agency is a "Study of Assassination." A how-to guide book in the art of political killing, the 19-page manual offers detailed descriptions of the procedures, instruments, and implementation of assassination. "The simplest local tools are often much the most efficient means of assassination," counsels the study. "A hammer, axe, wrench, screw driver, fire poker, kitchen knife, lamp stand, or anything hard, heavy and handy will suffice." For an assassin using "edge weapons," the manual notes in cold clinical terms, "puncture wounds of the body cavity may not be reliable unless the heart is reached....Absolute reliability is obtained by severing the spinal cord in the cervical region." T he manual also notes that to provide plausible denial, "no assassination instructions should ever be written or recorded." Murder, the drafters state, "is not morally justifiable," and "persons who are morally squeamish should not attempt it."

  Document 3: "Selection of individuals for disposal by Junta Group", March 31, 1954.

One of the many assassination lists compiled by the CIA during planning for Operation Success. As the memorandum indicates, the chief of one of the CIA's divisions involved in the coup (the division title has been deleted) requested a list of names of Arbenz government leaders, members of the Communist Party, and individuals "of tactical importance whose removal for psychological, organizational or others reasons is mandatory for the success of military action." The memo asks that CIA personnel read through the list and initial the names of those who should be included on a "final list of disposees." The list (and the initials or names of all CIA officers appearing in the document) has been withheld. A handwritten note attached on the bottom of the memo reads:

Elimination List April [illeg.] - [Illeg.] is taking a copy of list of names for checking with the [illeg.] April 7 - Original Memo with attached Biographic data has been passed to [deleted] Returned by [deleted] on 1 June 1954

  Document 4: "Guatemalan Communist Personnel to be disposed of during Military Operations of Calligeris", Origin deleted, Undated.

Another version of the assassination lists compiled by the CIA and Carlos Castillo Armas (code-named "Calligeris") in the course of preparing for the 1954 coup. The names of the agency's intended victims were divided into two categories: persons to be disposed of through "Executive action" (i.e., killed) and those to be imprisoned or exiled during the operation. Before releasing this document to the public, the CIA deleted every name, leaving only the rows of numbers to indicate how many people were targeted.

  Document 5: "Operation PBSUCCESS: The United States and Guatemala, 1952- 1954", CIA History Staff document by Nicholas Cullather, 1994. Excerpt.

A narrative history of the CIA's role in planning, organizing and executing the coup that toppled Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán on June 27, 1954. Cullather, now a diplomatic historian at the University of Indiana, worked on contract for one year with the CIA, where he was given access to thousands of agency records and secret operational files in order to produce this overview. The result is a surprisingly critical study of the agency's first covert operation in Latin America. Beginning with a review of the political, economic and social forces that led to Arbenz's presidency in 1951, the document is an intimate account of how cold war concerns convinced President Eisenhower to order the removal of the democratically-elected leader by force. It also provides countless new details of a covert mission plagued by disastrous military planning and failed security measures: according to Cullather, "Operation Success" barely succeeded. The CIA scrambled to convince the White House that it was an unqualified and all but bloodless victory, however. After Arbenz resigned, Eisenhower called the Director of Central Intelligence, Allan W. Dulles, and his senior covert planners into a formal briefing of the operation. Cullather's account now reveals that the agency lied to the president, telling him that only one of the rebels it had backed was killed. "Incredible," said the president. And it was. At least four dozen were dead, according to the CIA's own records. Thus did the Guatemala coup enter agency lore as an "unblemished triumph," Cullather explains, and become the model for future CIA activities in Latin America.

In Guatemala, of course, "Operation Success" had a deadly aftermath. After a small insurgency developed in the wake of the coup, Guatemala's military leaders developed and refined, with U.S. assistance, a massive counterinsurgency campaign that left tens of thousands massacred, maimed or missing.

Posted with @DittoRepost #dittorepost • @estadao GOLPE 🇨🇱 Em 15 de setembro de 1970, durante uma reunião de 20 minutos, o então presidente dos Estados Unidos, Richard Nixon, deu ordem para impedir que o líder socialista eleito do Chile, Salvador Allende, assumisse o poder, segundo documentos publicados nesta terça-feira, 15, pelo National Security Archive. A opção extrema: derrubar Allende é o título deste conjunto de relatórios que tiveram o sigilo retirado e são o anexo de um estudo de segurança nacional que analisou vantagens e desvantagens de um golpe militar no Chile. Segundo o pesquisador Peter Kornbluh, a reunião de 15 de setembro no Salão Oval marca "o primeiro grande passo para minar a democracia no Chile e apoiar o advento de uma ditadura militar". Leia a cobertura completa no link na bio. 📷: AFP https://www.instagram.com/p/CFLmGfKBwvU/?igshid=q0un3gqh5ur3