United States Intervention in Guatemalan Civil War

United States intervention in the Guatemalan Civil War ran from 1962 to 1992. From the time of the CIA-orchestrated 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état onward through the duration of the civil war, the United States maintained close inter-military relations with both military and civilian governments in Guatemala. For decades, the United States government trained, financed and overhauled the Guatemalan military and security forces. During the civil war, at least 1,552 Guatemalan military officers are verified to have been trained at the United States Army School of the Americas. Close US allies such as Israel and Argentina also sold weapons and provided military training to Guatemala.

According to Charles Maechling Jr., the director of U.S. counterinsurgency planning from 1961 to 1966, the Kennedy administration changed the mission of the Latin American armed forces from "hemispheric defense" to "internal security", which lead to U.S. supported state terror, employing "the methods of Heinrich Himmler’s extermination squads." General Robert Porter, Commander in Chief of the United States Southern Command, summarized the purpose of U.S. support in Congress in 1968, saying that United States military assistance and AID Public Safety projects in Latin America were "an insurance policy protecting our vast private investment in an area of tremendous trade and strategic value to our country."

AID Public Safety Program (OPS) (1962-1974)
In 1962, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff associated insurgency with the expression of dissenting opinions or political organizing, illegal strikes or street protests, and major guerrilla attacks, short of civil war. Moreover, the guerrilla's existence was blamed on political opposition groups, student protesters, university communities, and labor unions, who all would be dealt with accordingly. The U.S. State Department proclaimed that, in Latin America, the police "first detect discontent among people" and "should serve as one of the major means by which the government assures itself of acceptance by the majority."

In 1963, the CIA financed and directed AID Public Safety program (OPS) began providing expertise in crowd control, mass arrest-techniques, record keeping, and in establishing "an effective counter-subversive intelligence apparatus." The role of the CIA in OPS was to organize, train, equip, advise, and provide logistics to the security forces, as well as develop their investigative mechanisms, designed for detecting and collecting intelligence on "subversive" persons and organizations. There is also some suggestion that the CIA actively supported investigative units by supplying them with intelligence reports, though the relevant documents remain classified. CIA supplied equipment included, phones, teletype machines, radios, cars, guns, ammunition, surveillance equipment, explosives, cattle prods, cameras, typewriters, carbon paper, and filing cabinets.

In an academic study of U.S. assistance to Latin "political police", Latin Americanist Martha Huggins found a correlation, in that, across the board, "the more foreign police aid given, the more brutal and less democratic the police institutions and their governments become." Indeed, some CIA training was revealed to have included lessons on assassination weapons.

In 1974, the OPS was terminated by Congress after the U.S. had become "politically identified with police terrorism". There was also consensus that the guerrillas no longer posed a significant threat to the Guatemalan regime.

Central American Defense Council (CONDECA)
According to a study by Amnesty International's Michael Mcclintock, with the formation of the Central American Defense Council (CONDECA) in 1964, the Guatemalan security apparatus became interlinked with other U.S. client states in the region:

"'the United States military developed 'intelligence sharing arrangements; communications nets for control; periodic field exercizes to test the [Inter-American Security] System, and frequent meetings of the highest military authorities.' In Central America these were largely under the auspices of CONDECA and in close co-ordination with the United States Southern Command at the Panama Canal Zone. an agreement was made between the United States and each of the Central American countries to set up a 'Central America and Panama Security Telecommunications Network', intended 'to permit police and security agencies of Central American countries to communicate directly with one another information on identity, movements, activities and plans of subversives and criminals.' ..the network operated through a radio-teletype system, with each station under the control of the countries' top security/intelligence agencies..."

In Guatemala, it was the Central Regional de Telecommunicaciones under the Casa Presidencial. In 1966, the Commanding General of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) informed the House Armed Services Committee that military communications assistance was intended to interlock civilian security aid in order to ensure "effective national and regional military command and control systems for support of counterinsurgency."

Clandestine operations
In 1965-66, U.S. advisers introduced and implemented a counterterror program that began with U.S. Green Berets and CIA operatives creating and directing Guatemala's first clandestine paramilitary unit or "death squad", which also executed the first major campaign of clandestine terror. The counterterror program was run by the Department of Defense (DOD) and CIA, as the State Department often looked the other way to maintain it's "plausible deniability".

"Counterterror" meant adopting the guerrillas' alleged terror methods as a means of controlling the population, i.e. 'meeting terror with terror'. According to U.S. army counterinsurgency guidelines for a war game set in a fictitious region based on Central America, called "Centralia", U.S. advisers were instructed to employ "selective" counterterror, though "mass" counterterror was prohibited, meaning that, in 1966, genocide was not an option. The objective of the counterterror program was to deny the guerrillas their civilian support base.

Also, in 1967, the U.S. Military Mission was instrumental in the creation of the first civilian-based death squads by the Guatemalan army and security forces. Though the U.S. army referred to their civilian irregulars as "civilian defense forces" or "self defense forces", as they preferred filling their ranks with economic elites, which encouraged a sense of self-defense - since the guerrillas threatened the oligarchy - and thus, they would be less likely to defect. The families of loyal squadsman were rewarded, while the families of defectors were punished in an unspecified manner, referred to only as the "consequence."

Shortly after counterterror was introduced, a series of paramilitary death squads were created — the MANO BLANCA — the "White Hand", "the hand that will eradicate national renegades and traitors from the fatherland." Vowing to use the same terrorist tactics as the guerrillas. Then came CADEG (Guatemalan Anti-Communist Council) and NOA (New Anti-Communist Organization) and by 1967, more than 20 death squads were operative. All of them were essentially adjuncts of the intelligence apparatus that U.S. advisers either helped create or reinforced.

Counterterror has it's roots in the Phoenix Program in South Vietnam, a CIA-led paramilitary operation designed to identify and "neutralize" the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong. The standard practice was to abduct, interrogate, torture, execute, or kill outright suspected Viet Cong guerrillas and their civilian supporters. Accordingly, shortly after the CIA directed Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) started marking victims and potential victims with the "Eye of God" - a paper printed "grotesque" human eye - some Guatemalan death squads similarly began using their own "calling cards", such as the Mono Blanca, which used the mark of a "white hand".

In the mid-1970's, U.S. Army Mobile Training Teams (MTT) brought Operation "Phoenix" to Guatemala and elsewhere, in part, through it's Foreign Intelligence Assistance Program, codenamed "Project X". After a possible 4 year suspension, the program was redeployed by the Reagan administration in 1982, which probably ended before 1985, though some of the field manuals were used until 1991. The manuals were a guide for conducting clandestine operations, including counterterror activities, domestic surveillance, and creating a "black, grey, or white" list of potential opponents. "U.S. instructors could teach abusive techniques to foreign militaries that they could not legally perform themselves."

In addition, the CIA collaborated with the Guatemalan D-2 [or G-2], the primary directorate of military intelligence. The CIA's collaboration with D-2 was described by U.S. and Guatemalan operatives, and was confirmed by former Guatemalan heads of state. Colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez, a Guatemalan officer and CIA operative implicated in murders of guerrilla leader Efraín Bamaca Velásquez and Michael Devine, discussed in an interview how the CIA advised and helped to run D-2. He claimed that U.S. agents trained D-2 men. Alpirez described attending CIA sessions at D-2 bases on "contra-subversion" tactics and "how to manage factors of power" to "fortify democracy." The CIA also helped to provide "technical assistance" including communications equipment, computers and special firearms, as well as collaborative use of CIA-owned helicopters that were flown out of a piper hangar at La Aurora civilian airport and from a separate U.S. Air facility. The CIA also supplied the Guatemalan army and D-2 with "civil material assistance," which included medical supplies, Vietnam-era metal jeep parts, compasses and walkie talkies. CIA collaboration with D-2 ended in 1995.

Military training
Between 1956-61, the U.S. Army trained over 600 Guatemalan military officers either in the United States or at Ft. Glick in the U.S. controlled Panama Canal Zone.

Although little training of Guatemalan officers occurred at the SOA in Panama between 1978 and 1985, the United States Army Special Forces continued to instruct Guatemalan officers in "direct action destruction patrols" and "helicopter assault tactics" at the Escuela Politecnica (the National Military Academy), and train Guatemalan army recruits at the Regional Center of Military Training (CREM) in Puerto Castilla, Honduras. Jesse Garcia, a 32-year-old Green Beret captain functioning in Guatemala at the time, described his job as "not much different" than that of US advisors in El Salvador in an interview with the New York Times in October 1982.

The Carter years (1977-1981)
Despite Congress enacting a ban on military aid in 1977, U.S. intelligence officers reportedly continued working with the Presidential Intelligence Service (Archivo) throughout the Carter years. There is also indication that the Army Foreign Intelligence Assistance Program was still active in 1980.

In addition, the GAO discovered that the congressional ban did not suspend pre scheduled arms deliveries or commercial sales of munitions and dual-use civilian and military hardware licensed by the U.S. Department of Commerce. In a 1981 congressional hearing, State Department requested data on the record of military aid revealed that:

"'in fiscal years 1978, 1979, and 1980 — the 3 years for which the Carter administration can be held wholly responsible — the United States delivered $8.5 million in military assistance, mostly FMS (Foreign Military Sales) credit sales, and it issued 1.8 million dollars' arms sales worth of export licenses for commercial arms sales...a rate that does not differ much at all from that of the Nixon-Ford administration.'"

Military assistance included, ammo cartridges, pistols, revolvers, rifles, carbines, shotguns, and automatic firearms. Other items included, Kevlar vests, explosives, tank spare parts, trucks, Bell 212 and 412 model helicopters (later modified for military use), military ground vehicles, a Psychological Stress Analyzer, and electric tasers.

The Reagan years (1981-1989)
In April 1981, the Reagan national security team agreed to supply military aid to the Guatemalan armed forces in order to exterminate the guerrillas and their "civilian support mechanisms." The team sent a message to Guatemalan officials indicating that, "Mr. Reagan recognizes that a good deal of dirty work has to be done."

That year, the Reagan administration approved a $2 million CIA covert action program for Guatemala. Top Guatemalan military leaders were then put on the CIA payroll.

In an investigative report, American newspaper columnist Jack Anderson revealed in August, 1981, at the height of the aid prohibition, that the United States was using Cuban exiles to train security forces in Guatemala; in this operation, Anderson wrote, the CIA had arranged for "secret training in the finer points of assassination."

In mid 1982, the administration deployed U.S. advisers to teach Guatemalan military cadets "anything our Army has," according to U.S. Green Beret Jesse Garcia, who was serving as an instructor at the time. This included training in "ambushes, surveillance, combat arms, artillery, armor, patrolling, demolition and helicopter assault tactics." In summary, Garcia added, the United States provided expertise in "how to destroy towns."

In their assessment of U.S. aid to Guatemala in 1983, the editors of the Economist asserted that "What liberal Americans can reasonably expect is that a condition of military help to Guatemala should be an easing of the political persecution of the centre — which played into the hands of the extreme left in the first place." "The others evidently deserve their fate," Noam Chomsky observed.

In fiscal years 1981, 1982 and 1983, overt US military aid deliveries totaled $3.2 million, $4 million and $6.36 million respectively; a combined total of approximately $13.54 million (shipments included vital overhauls for previously acquired Bell UH-1 helicopters and A-37 counterinsurgency aircraft). Under contracts licensed by the US Department of Commerce, twenty three Jet-Ranger helicopters, worth $25 million, were delivered to the Guatemalan armed forces between December 1980 and December 1982 (which shared interchangeable parts with previously acquired units and incoming military spare parts). Other arms provisions made through the US Department of Commerce between 1981 and 1983 included laser aimed sights for automatic rifles, grenade launchers, two transport planes, and eight T-37 trainers. With the coordination of the CIA and the Pentagon, ten U.S. ex-Belgian M41 Walker Bulldog tanks, worth $36 million, were delivered to the Guatemalan Armed Forces via the Dominican Republic in late 1981.

Human Rights Watch in 1984 criticized U.S. President Ronald Reagan for his December 1982 visit to Ríos Montt in Honduras, where Reagan dismissed reports of human rights abuses by prominent human rights organizations while insisting that Ríos Montt was receiving a "bum rap". The organization reported that soon after, the Reagan administration announced that it was dropping a five-year prohibition on arms sales and moreover had "approved a sale of $6.36 million worth of military spare parts," to Ríos Montt and his forces.

The Bush years (1989-1992)
In 1988-89, the Bush administration strengthened ties with the Guatemalan armed forces. Increased US assistance to the military included approximately 16,000 M-16 assault rifles; the training of Guatemalan paratroopers in marksmanship, tactics and night-patrolling by Green Berets; parachute and jungle-survival training by U.S. Special Forces for Guatemala's elite Kaibil counterinsurgency troops; and training for flying A-37 attack planes and to repair C-47 transport planes.

The United States announced that they were using the armed forces in 1990 "to promote economic and political stability" as they were reportedly involved in human rights abuses and in drug trafficking. Meanwhile, the CIA continued supporting the Army's war by providing them with intelligence on guerrillas, farmers, peasants and other opponents. The CIA station chief in Guatemala from 1988 to 1991 was a Cuban American. He had about 20 officers with a budget of about $5 million a year and an equal or greater sum for "liaison" with Guatemalan military. His job included placing and keeping senior Guatemalan officers on his payroll. Among them was Alpirez, who recruited others for the CIA. Alpirez's intelligence unit spied on Guatemalans and is accused by human rights groups of assassinations.

An Intelligence Oversight Board report from 1996 writes that military aid was stopped during the Carter administration but later resumed under the Reagan Administration. "After a civilian government under President Cerezo was elected in 1985, overt non-lethal US military aid to Guatemala resumed. In December 1990, however, largely as a result of the killing of US citizen Michael DeVine by members of the Guatemalan army, the Bush administration suspended almost all overt military aid." "The funds the CIA provided to the Guatemalan liaison services were vital to the D-2 and Archivos." The CIA "continued this aid after the termination of overt military assistance in 1990." "Overall CIA funding levels to the Guatemalan services dropped consistently from about $3.5 million in FY 1989 to about 1 million in 1995." The report writes that "the CIA's liaison relationship with the Guatemalan services also benefited US interests by enlisting the assistance of Guatemala's primary intelligence and security service – the army's directorate of intelligence (D-2) – in areas such as reversing the 'auto-coup" of 1993'" "In the face of strong protests by Guatemalan citizens and the international community (including the United States) and – most importantly – in the face of the Guatemalan army's refusal to support him, President Serrano's Fujimori-style 'auto-coup' failed."

Argentine involvement
Military regimes in the South American Southern Cone also provided material support and training to the Guatemalan government. Many of the repressive tactics used by the Guatemalan security forces borrowed extensively from those employed during Operation Condor, especially those used by Argentina during the Dirty War. The military junta in Argentina was a prominent source of both material aid and inspiration to the Guatemalan military, especially during the final two years of the Lucas government. Argentina's involvement with the Guatemalan government fit within the broader context of Operation Charly, a CIA-backed covert operation aimed at providing intelligence training and counterinsurgency assistance to the governments in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala as a supplement to U.S. operations in the region.

In October 1981, the Guatemalan government and the Argentine military junta formalized secret accords which augmented Argentine participation in government counterinsurgency operations. As part of the agreement, two-hundred Guatemalan officers were dispatched to Buenos Aires to undergo advanced military intelligence training, which included instruction in interrogation. Argentine involvement had initially began in 1980, when the Videla regime dispatched army and naval officers to Guatemala to assist in counterinsurgency activities, under contract from President Romeo Lucas Garcia. In addition to working with the regular security forces, Argentine military advisors as well as a squadron of the notorious Batallón de Inteligencia 601 (Argentina's elite special forces battalion) worked directly with the Lucas government's paramilitary death squads, most notably the Ejercito Secreto Anticommunista (ESA). Argentine military advisors also participated in the Guatemalan army's rural counteroffensive in 1981 during "Operation Ash 81". Argentina's collaboration with the governments in Central America came to an end during the Falklands War in 1982.

Israeli involvement
The Guatemalan military also maintained strong ties with Israel, which began selling and delivering weapons to the Guatemalan military during the Kjell Laugerud presidency. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) calculates that 39% of the Guatemala's weapons imports between 1975 and 1979 were from Israel. Guatemalan ground troops were primarily equipped with several different configurations of the 5.56×45mm NATO Galil assault rifle and limited numbers of the 9mm Uzi submachine gun, both manufactured by Israel Military Industries (IMI). Israel was also the principal supplier of military hardware to Argentina from late-1978 onward after the United States suspended aid to the Argentine military junta. The government in Argentina also supplied quantities of Israeli-manufactured weapons and hardware to the Guatemalan military on several occasions.

In addition to supplying arms to Guatemala (both directly and indirectly through Argentina), Israel also provided intelligence and operational training to Guatemalan military officers. Technical support was also given to the Guatemalan counterinsurgency by the Israelis, including a computer system located in an annex of the Presidential General Staff (EMP), behind the presidential palace in 1980. This computer system incorporated a data analysis system developed during the "Dirty War" in Argentina, and passed on by Argentine advisors, which was used to monitor electrical and water usage to pinpoint the coordinates of guerrilla safe-houses. A total of thirty guerrilla safe-houses were infiltrated in 1981.

In September 1980, Guatemalan Ministry of Interior defector Elias Barahona claimed that Israeli advisers were "training youth leaders in dissemination of information and propaganda, and in the formation of terrorist commandos." The Democratic Front Against Repression also claimed Israeli advisers and technicians were working alongside U.S. advisers in the telecommunications and intelligence facilities in the National Palace Complex.

In 1981 the chief of staff of the Guatemalan army said that "the Israeli soldier is the model for our soldiers". After the March 23, 1982 junior officers coup, Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt told ABC News that his success was due to the fact that "our soldiers were trained by Israelis." There was not much outcry in Israel at the time about its involvement in Guatemala, though the support was not a secret. Despite public praise for Israel by Guatemalan authorities, at least one Guatemalan official claimed Israelis overcharged Guatemala for weapons. Gen. Hector Gramajo stated in an interview, "Maybe some Israelis taught us intelligence but for reasons of business... The hawks (Israeli arms merchants) took advantage of us, selling us equipment at triple the price."

During the Reagan administration, Israel worked to improve it's relations with Washington by serving as a surrogate in supplying military aid to Guatemala.

South African involvement
The military regimes in Guatemala maintained close relations with the government of apartheid South Africa. Sources reported as early as 1981 that South Africa was assisting the Lucas regime in the construction of an armaments factory in Guatemala. In November 1984, high ranking South African Generals L.B. Erasmus and Alexander Potgeiter headed an SADF delegation to Guatemala which toured Guatemalan military bases and installations and held talks with high-ranking officials of the Mejia Victores government to discuss continued military aid.

High-ranking military officials in the Guatemalan military, namely General Héctor Gramajo, maintained contact with South African intelligence officials, exchanging intelligence methods and techniques with South African intelligence and acquiring knowledge pertaining to how the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces fought in the Angolan Civil War and how Cuban intelligence operated. Guatemalan military officials intended to apply the experience of the South Africans in Angola to gain insight into the combat methods of the largely Cuban-trained insurgency.