Central Intelligence Agency

CIA On 26 July 1947, U.S. President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act which officially established the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The CIA began to function on September 20 that same year and has since been involved in numerous covert operations aimed at destabilizing governments and assassinating political leaders who have sought to bring about change that favors their societies and runs contrary to U.S. interests.

What follows is a very brief summary of terrorist actions carried out in Latin America and the Caribbean in which the CIA has been involved: Financing for and organization of the coup which overthrew Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. Violent military dictatorships which succeeded the Arbenz government were responsible for the deaths of 160,000 people and the disappearance of 40,000 others.

Following the triumph of the Cuban revolution, President Dwight Eisenhower authorized more than 60 covert operations aimed at assassinating Fidel Castro. In Miami, he set up a CIA station exclusively devoted to anti-Cuban operations. He organized counter-revolutionary groups that killed civilians and sabotaged economically important facilities. He financed, armed and trained a brigade of mercenaries who invaded Cuba in April 1961. President John Kennedy assumed complete responsibility for the fiasco. This terrorist policy, which also involved forms of biological warfare and went hand in hand with the economic blockade imposed on Cuba by the U.S. government, resulted in heavy human and material losses.

In 1963, the CIA undertook a propaganda campaign against Dominican President Juan Bosch which culminated in a coup d’état. In 1965, following an uprising led by constitutionalist officers who called for the return of Bosch, the United States intervened militarily with coordination from the CIA.

In 1964, the CIA undertook a campaign against Joao Goulart, president of Brazil, which culminated in an attempted coup. The CIA participated in the training of and operations undertaken by the Bolivian army against the National Liberation Army (ELN). Agent Feliz Rodriguez, who arrived from La Paz, was charged with relaying the order to kill Ernesto Che Guevara.

Following Salvador Allende’s electoral victory in Chile, President Richard Nixon allocated $10 million to operations aimed at destabilizing the new government. The CIA organized and financed the fascist coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power and resulted in a horrifying number of deaths and disappearances.

CIA agents Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles planned and executed an act of sabotage that resulted in an explosion aboard a Cuban commercial flight departing from Barbados on October 6, 1976 that killed all crew members and passengers – a total of 73 people. When the Sandinistas come to power in Nicaragua, U.S. President Jimmy Carter authorized CIA operations in support of opposition forces (the “Contras”). During Ronald Reagan’s term in office, hundreds of millions of dollars were devoted to the creation of a mercenary army which, based in neighboring Honduras, aimed at undermining Nicaraguan efforts to create a more democratic and plural society. The war had a death toll of 60,000 people and resulted in the disappearance of 2,000 others; it also cost the country $17 billion dollars in losses, a sum the United States refused to pay, despite a ruling by the International Court of Justice in 1986. Ultimately, the opposition came to power in 1990 following an electoral process in which the United States intervened, as well as the CIA.

The links between the CIA and the paramilitary forces of military dictatorships established in the South Cone in the 1970’s and 80’s were close and notorious. The CIA played a key a role in the conception and organization of security agencies which spawned paramilitary groups in El Salvador. During the Salvadoran civil war, the United States supported successive military regimes with more than five billions dollars. The war resulted in the deaths of 75,000 people and the disappearances of 8,000.

In 1983, U.S. troops invaded Granada, shortly after a coup d’état overthrew president Maurice Bishop. According to Ronald Reagan, Granada –a 340 square kilometer island with 110,000 inhabitants– represented a military threat to the United States. Reagan expressed concerns over an airport that Cuban workers were constructing to foster tourism. Following the invasion, the United States announced its decision to finish the construction of the airport…to foster tourism.

In 1986, a DC-3 plane that was supplying counter-revolutionary forces with military equipment was shot down in Nicaragua. The pilot, Eugene Hasenfus, revealed that the operations were directed by the CIA and that the planes took off from bases in El Salvador and Honduras.

In 1989, the United States invaded Panama with the pretext of seeking to capture Manuel Antonio Noriega, an ex-CIA agent accused of drug-trafficking. U.S. government officials had full knowledge, at least since 1972, of Noriega’s illicit activities, but they had kept him on their payroll while he was useful to them. The invasion resulted in 7,000 deaths and disappearances and million-dollar losses for the country.

CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles organized and executed a series of terrorist attacks on Cuban hotels which resulted in one death and numerous wounded. Salvadoran mercenaries participated in these actions.

Sources:

• The Cuban People Accuse (Demanda del Pueblo Cubano)

www.patriagrande.net

• William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Interventions in the Third World.

Noam Chomsky, The Invasion of Panama. What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Mexico, XXI, 1995.

• Commission for Historical Elucidation (Comision para el Esclarecimiento Historico).Guatemala: Memoria del silencio (Remembrance of Silence), Guatemala, s/e, 1999.

• Eduardo Galeano, Memoria del Fuego III (Remembrance of Fire). El Siglo del Viento (The Century of Wind), Siglo Veintiuno Editores, Mexico, 1987.

• Cronologia 25 años de Revolucion (25 years of Revolution: A Chronology), Editora Politica, La Habana, 1987. Cronologia de la Revolucion, La primera década 1979 – 1989 (Chronology of the Revolution, the First Decade 1979 – 1989), Barricada, Managua, 18 July 1989.