THE CIA: A WORLD TERRORIST ORGANIZATION:

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PESHAWAR The Counterterrorist Myth A former CIA operative explains why the terrorist Usama bin Ladin has little to fear from American intelligence by Reuel Marc Gerecht ..... The United States has spent billions of dollars on counterterrorism since the U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, in August of 1998. Tens of millions have been spent on covert operations specifically targeting Usama bin Ladin and his terrorist organization, al-Qa'ida. Senior U.S. officials boldly claim—even after the suicide attack last October on the USS Cole, in the port of Aden—that the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are clandestinely "picking apart" bin Ladin's organization "limb by limb." But having worked for the CIA for nearly nine years on Middle Eastern matters (I left the Directorate of Operations because of frustration with the Agency's many problems), I would argue that America's counterterrorism program in the Middle East and its environs is a myth. Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier, is on the cultural periphery of the Middle East. It is just down the Grand Trunk Road from the legendary Khyber Pass, the gateway to Afghanistan. Peshawar is where bin Ladin cut his teeth in the Islamic jihad, when, in the mid-1980s, he became the financier and logistics man for the Maktab al-Khidamat, The Office of Services, an overt organization trying to recruit and aid Muslim, chiefly Arab, volunteers for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The friendships and associations made in The Office of Services gave birth to the clandestine al-Qa'ida, The Base, whose explicit aim is to wage a jihad against the West, especially the United States. According to Afghan contacts and Pakistani officials, bin Ladin's men regularly move through Peshawar and use it as a hub for phone, fax, and modem communication with the outside world. Members of the embassy-bombing teams in Africa probably planned to flee back to Pakistan. Once there they would likely have made their way into bin Ladin's open arms through al-Qa'ida's numerous friends in Peshawar. Every tribe and region of Afghanistan is represented in this city, which is dominated by the Pathans, the pre-eminent tribe in the Northwest Frontier and southern Afghanistan. Peshawar is also a power base of the Taliban, Afghanistan's fundamentalist rulers. Knowing the city's ins and outs would be indispensable to any U.S. effort to capture or kill bin Ladin and his closest associates. Intelligence collection on al-Qa'ida can't be of much real value unless the agent network covers Peshawar. During a recent visit, at sunset, when the city's cloistered alleys go black except for an occasional flashing neon sign, I would walk through Afghan neighborhoods. Even in the darkness I had a case officer's worst sensation—eyes following me everywhere. To escape the crowds I would pop into carpet, copper, and jewelry shops and every cybercafé I could find. These were poorly lit one- or two-room walk-ups where young men surfed Western porn. No matter where I went, the feeling never left me. I couldn't see how the CIA as it is today had any chance of running a successful counterterrorist operation against bin Ladin in Peshawar, the Dodge City of Central Asia. Westerners cannot visit the cinder-block, mud-brick side of the Muslim world—whence bin Ladin's foot soldiers mostly come—without announcing who they are. No case officer stationed in Pakistan can penetrate either the Afghan communities in Peshawar or the Northwest Frontier's numerous religious schools, which feed manpower and ideas to bin Ladin and the Taliban, and seriously expect to gather useful information about radical Islamic terrorism—let alone recruit foreign agents. Even a Muslim CIA officer with native-language abilities (and the Agency, according to several active-duty case officers, has very few operatives from Middle Eastern backgrounds) could do little more in this environment than a blond, blue-eyed all-American. Case officers cannot long escape the embassies and consulates in which they serve. A U.S. official overseas, photographed and registered with the local intelligence and security services, can't travel much, particularly in a police-rich country like Pakistan, without the "host" services' knowing about it. An officer who tries to go native, pretending to be a true-believing radical Muslim searching for brothers in the cause, will make a fool of himself quickly. In Pakistan, where the government's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency and the ruling army are competent and tough, the CIA can do little if these institutions are against it. And they are against it. Where the Taliban and Usama bin Ladin are concerned, Pakistan and the United States aren't allies. Relations between the two countries have been poor for years, owing to American opposition to Pakistan's successful nuclear-weapons program and, more recently, Islamabad's backing of Muslim Kashmiri separatists. Bin Ladin's presence in Afghanistan as a "guest" of the Pakistani-backed Taliban has injected even more distrust and suspicion into the relationship. In other words, American intelligence has not gained and will not gain Pakistan's assistance in its pursuit of bin Ladin. The only effective way to run offensive counterterrorist operations against Islamic radicals in more or less hostile territory is with "non-official-cover" officers—operatives who are in no way openly attached to the U.S. government. Imagine James Bond minus the gadgets, the women, the Walther PPK, and the Aston Martin. But as of late 1999 no program to insert NOCs into an Islamic fundamentalist organization abroad had been implemented, according to one such officer who has served in the Middle East. "NOCs haven't really changed at all since the Cold War," he told me recently. "We're still a group of fake businessmen who live in big houses overseas. We don't go to mosques and pray." A former senior Near East Division operative says, "The CIA probably doesn't have a single truly qualified Arabic-speaking officer of Middle Eastern background who can play a believable Muslim fundamentalist who would volunteer to spend years of his life with shitty food and no women in the mountains of Afghanistan. For Christ's sake, most case officers live in the suburbs of Virginia. We don't do that kind of thing." A younger case officer boils the problem down even further: "Operations that include diarrhea as a way of life don't happen." Behind-the-lines counterterrorism operations are just too dangerous for CIA officers to participate in directly. When I was in the Directorate of Operations, the Agency would deploy a small army of officers for a meeting with a possibly dangerous foreigner if he couldn't be met in the safety of a U.S. embassy or consulate. Officers still in the clandestine service say that the Agency's risk-averse, bureaucratic nature—which mirrors, of course, the growing physical risk-aversion of American society—has only gotten worse. few miles from Peshawar's central bazaar, near the old Cantonment, where redcoats once drilled and where the U.S. consulate can be found, is the American Club, a traditional hangout for international-aid workers, diplomats, journalists, and spooks. Worn-out Western travelers often stop here on the way from Afghanistan to decompress; one can buy a drink, watch videos, order a steak. Security warnings from the American embassy are posted on the club's hallway bulletin board. The bulletins I saw last December advised U.S. officials and their families to stay away from crowds, mosques, and anyplace else devout Pakistanis and Afghans might gather. The U.S. embassy in Islamabad, a fortress surrounded by roadblocks, Pakistani soldiers, and walls topped with security cameras and razor wire, strongly recommended a low profile—essentially life within the Westernized, high-walled Cantonment area or other spots where diplomats are unlikely to bump into fundamentalists. Such warnings accurately reflect the mentality inside both the Department of State and the CIA. Individual officers may venture out, but their curiosity isn't encouraged or rewarded. Unless one of bin Ladin's foot soldiers walks through the door of a U.S. consulate or embassy, the odds that a CIA counterterrorist officer will ever see one are extremely poor. The Directorate of Operations' history of success has done little to prepare the CIA for its confrontation with radical Islamic terrorism. Perhaps the DO's most memorable victory was against militant Palestinian groups in the 1970s and 1980s. The CIA could find common ground with Palestinian militants, who often drink, womanize, and spend time in nice hotels in pleasant, comfortable countries. Still, its "penetrations" of the PLO—delightfully and kindly rendered in David Ignatius's novel Agents of Innocence (1987)—were essentially emissaries from Yasir Arafat to the U.S. government. Difficulties with fundamentalism and mud-brick neighborhoods aside, the CIA has stubbornly refused to develop cadres of operatives specializing in one or two countries. Throughout the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989) the DO never developed a team of Afghan experts. The first case officer in Afghanistan to have some proficiency in an Afghan language didn't arrive until 1987, just a year and a half before the war's end. Robert Baer, one of the most talented Middle East case officers of the past twenty years (and the only operative in the 1980s to collect consistently first-rate intelligence on the Lebanese Hizbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad), suggested to headquarters in the early 1990s that the CIA might want to collect intelligence on Afghanistan from the neighboring Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Headquarters' reply: Too dangerous, and why bother? The Cold War there was over with the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Afghanistan was too far away, internecine warfare was seen as endemic, and radical Islam was an abstract idea. Afghanistan has since become the brain center and training ground for Islamic terrorism against the United States, yet the CIA's clandestine service still usually keeps officers on the Afghan account no more than two or three years. Until October of 1999 no CIA official visited Ahmad Shah Mas'ud in Afghanistan. Mas'ud is the ruler of northeastern Afghanistan and the leader of the only force still fighting the Taliban. He was the most accomplished commander of the anti-Soviet mujahideen guerrillas; his army now daily confronts Arab military units that are under the banner of bin Ladin, yet no CIA case officer has yet debriefed Mas'ud's soldiers on the front lines or the Pakistani, Afghan, Chinese-Turkoman, and Arab holy warriors they've captured. The CIA's Counterterrorism Center, which now has hundreds of employees from numerous government agencies, was the creation of Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, an extraordinarily energetic bureaucrat-spook. In less than a year in the mid-1980s Clarridge converted a three-man operation confined to one room with one TV set broadcasting CNN into a staff that rivaled the clandestine service's Near East Division for primacy in counterterrorist operations. Yet the Counterterrorism Center didn't alter the CIA's methods overseas at all. "We didn't really think about the details of operations—how we would penetrate this or that group," a former senior counterterrorist official says. "Victory for us meant that we stopped [Thomas] Twetten [the chief of the clandestine service's Near East Division] from walking all over us." In my years inside the CIA, I never once heard case officers overseas or back at headquarters discuss the ABCs of a recruitment operation against any Middle Eastern target that took a case officer far off the diplomatic and business-conference circuits. Long-term seeding operations simply didn't occur. George Tenet, who became the director of the CIA in 1997, has repeatedly described America's counterterrorist program as "robust" and in most cases successful at keeping bin Ladin's terrorists "off-balance" and anxious about their own security. The Clinton Administration's senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council, Richard Clarke, who has continued as the counterterrorist czar in the Bush Administration, is sure that bin Ladin and his men stay awake at night "around the campfire" in Afghanistan, "worried stiff about who we're going to get next." If we are going to defeat Usama bin Ladin, we need to openly side with Ahmad Shah Mas'ud, who still has a decent chance of fracturing the tribal coalition behind Taliban power. That, more effectively than any clandestine counterterrorist program in the Middle East, might eventually force al-Qa'ida's leader to flee Afghanistan, where U.S. and allied intelligence and military forces cannot reach him. Until then, I don't think Usama bin Ladin and his allies will be losing much sleep around the campfire. NOTE:THE FACT IS AHMAD SHAH MASOUD, A LEADER IRAN ALSO LOVED, WAS KILLED IN A TERRORIST ATTACK.TWO "JOURNALISTS" BLEW THEMSELVES UP WHEN INTERVIEWING HIM>
CIA / Harbury Case In 1992, Efrain Bamaca Velásquez, a Mayan resistance leader also known as Comandante Everardo, vanished during a brief combat in Guatemala. The Guatemalan army reported that he had died in the skirmish, but his wife, U.S. citizen Jennifer Harbury, later learned from an eye witness that he had in fact been captured alive and was being subjected to severe torture in a nearby military base. Because of his high rank and unusual level of information, army officials were seeking to break him psychologically through long term torture. The goal was not to kill him, but to force him to work as a secret informant for the army's intelligence division. In order to avoid international outcry, military officials had falsely claimed his death in combat. The witness also reported more than thirty other secretly detained prisoners of war. After several hunger strikes, repeated lies by U.S. officials, and many Freedom of Information Act requests, Ms. Harbury has assembled cases against the Guatemalan military and U.S. officials. The case against the Guatemalan military received a full international trial in the Inter-American Court in San José, Costa Rica in 1998. A final judgement is still pending; a Court decision is hoped for this year. In October, 1999, the Inter-American Court sent final transcripts to Jennifer Harbury for review. She and her lawyers filed their final 85-page brief in response. As of now, all parties are awaiting the final decision of the court on the responsibility of the Guatemalan government for the murder of Efrain Bamaca Velásquez. A federal civil rights case has also been filed against a number of United States officials in the State Department, White House, and the CIA. 		. . . a Harvard-educated lawyer whose three-year quest to find her Guatemalan husband has revealed high-level involvement between the CIA and the Guatemalan military in his capture, torture, and murder


Who Knew What and When Did They Know It? Harbury/Bamaca Case Update I. Introduction In 1995 U.S. Representative Robert Torricelli disclosed that Efrain Bamaca Vela´squez, a Mayan resistance leader in Guatemala, had been extrajudicially executed by a former paid CIA informant. Bamaca's wife, U.S. citizen Jennifer Harbury, had been searching for him since his 1992 "disappearance", and had carried out three life-threatening hunger strikes in an effort to save his life. In the ensuing political scandal, the official U.S. position was that rogue operators within the CIA had known of Bamaca's fate but had failed to inform the Department of State, which had, as a result, unwittingly misinformed Harbury. Since that time Harbury has steadily obtained official documents about her case through her Freedom of Information Act litigation. These shed a great deal of light on the truthfulness of the "official story", as well as the questions as to who knew what, and when they knew it, within the U.S. government. II. Background In 1992 Efrain Bamaca Vela´squez, a Mayan resistance leader also known as Comandante Everardo, vanished during a brief combat in Guatemala. The Guatemalan army reported that he had died in the skirmish, but his wife, U.S. citizen Jennifer Harbury, later learned from an eye witness that he had in fact been captured alive and was being subjected to severe torture in a nearby military base. Because of his high rank and unusual level of information, army officials were seeking to break him psychologically through long term torture. The goal was not to kill him, but to force him to work as a secret informant for the army's intelligence division. In order to avoid international outcry, military officials had falsely claimed his death in combat. The witness also reported more than thirty other secretly detained prisoners of war. Upon receiving this information in early 1993, Harbury approached the OAS as well as the Department of State and a number of human rights organizations for help. That summer, she traveled to Guatemala and opened the grave where her husband had been reportedly buried, only to find the body of a far younger and smaller person with very different dental records. She promptly reported this finding to U.S. Ambassador Marilyn McAffee, who promised to look into the matter immediately and report back to Harbury. Harbury then engaged in her first hunger strike in Guatemala, in September 1993, in front of the Polytechnica, demanding that her husband and all other clandestinely detained prisoners be turned over to the courts for fair trials. Upon her return to the United States, Harbury again and again sought the assistance of the Department of State and the U.S. Embassy. Although support increased from the OAS, the U.S. Congress, and numerous human rights organizations, State Department officials repeatedly stated that they had tried again to obtain information, that the Guatemalan army stated they had never captured Bamaca, and that nothing else could be done. State Department form letters to Congress and concerned citizens claimed that there was no independent evidence that any secret prisoners of war existed in Guatemala, and that they were concerned about the Bamaca case and would continue to press for information. In October of 1994 Harbury began a hunger strike to the death in front of the National Palace in Guatemala. This lasted for thirty two days, from early October through early November. Ambassador McAffee frequently came to visit in person, and a staffer arrived almost daily to monitor her situation. These persons continued to give Harbury the same official statements. After Harbury passed some thirty days without food, Mike Wallace announced on "60 Minutes" that the U.S. Embassy did indeed have information about Bamaca, but was refusing to disclose it to Harbury or anyone else. Such information consisted of a CIA report to the Department of State clearly informing them that Bamaca had been captured alive by the Guatemalan army and secretly detained. On the thirty second day of Harbury's hunger strike, the Ambassador informed her that a demarche had been presented to the President of Guatemala, stating that according to U.S. intelligence sources, Bamaca had been captured alive by the Guatemalan army, that he had been slightly but not seriously wounded, and that there was no evidence to show that he was still alive. Harbury, having also been invited to speak with Anthony Lake in Washington, then returned to the U.S. to press for protection of her husband's life. Anthony Lake gave Harbury the same oddly worded message delivered by the Ambassador. When pressed as to whether or not there was any information as to Bamaca's actual death, as opposed to a mere lack of evidence that he remained alive, Lake informed her that U.S. officials had "scraped the bottom of the barrel" and that there was nothing more, but that he would keep her informed. Harbury then returned to the Department of State and was given the same message yet again. She demanded all documents about her husband's fate but did not receive them. When she asked again and again if there was any evidence of any kind to suggest that her husband was dead as opposed to "missing", she was told that they did not know what had happened to him and would assume he was alive for purposes of the ongoing investigation. In January 1995 filed her Freedom of Information Act demands with all relevant agencies, but received no documents. When informed by a journalist that a second demarche had been given, she confronted State Department officials as well as the Ambassador. She was told only that --a request had been made to "reinterview" certain military officials in Guatemala. When Harbury pressed repeatedly for any evidence about her husband, she was told that the U.S. officials believed he was dead because they could find no evidence that he was alive, and some three years had passed, but that there was nothing concrete, that they did not know what had become of him, and would assume he was alive for purposes of the investigation. Harbury asked members of the U.N. team, MINUGUA if they had been given further information by the U.S. Embassy. MINUGUA had been asked by the U.S. to investigate the case, even though they would be jurisdictionally barred from looking into the matter if Bamaca were known to be dead. The MINUGUA officials reassured Harbury that Embassy officials did not know what Bamaca's fate was, and that all were assuming that he was still alive. Rep. Richardson and former Ambassador Robert White traveled to Guatemala on Harbury's behalf but were given no further information. Presented with this situation, Harbury returned to her hunger strike, this time in front of the White House in Washington D.C. in March 1995. Two days earlier, Ambassador McAffee gave a speech in Guatemala about the need to end impunity, stating, "And that is why questions continue to swirl about the Bamaca case ... what happened there?" After Harbury had spent 12 days on this third strike, Rep. Torricelli publicly disclosed that Bamaca had been executed without trial in 1992 upon orders of Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, a School of the Americas graduate and a former paid CIA informant. Alpirez was also implicated in the murder of U.S. citizen Michael Devine. The official response was that although the CIA had possessed the information, certain rogue operators had kept the State Department officials in the dark about the evidence. Thus the State Department was in fact a victim as well and had "innocently" disinformed Harbury. The following documents clearly indicate that this was never the case. III. U.S. Agency Files: An Evaluation A. 1992-1994 During this time period, the official State Department position was typified by the enclosed form letter sent to U.S. Senator Brown, dated Nov. 1993, stating that no independent information existed as to Mr. Bamaca or any clandestine prisoners. Harbury was told again and again by State officials that they had ,repeatedly made inquiries, and were informed by the army that Bamaca was never captured alive, and that there was little else that could be done. This position continued through most of Harbury's 32 day hunger strike from early October to early November 1994. In fact, agency documents reveal the following: 1. A March 18, 1992 CIA report was sent to both the White as well as to the State Department, announcing that Comandante Everardo had been captured alive, and that the army would probably fake his death to better take advantage of his intelligence. This report was sent out a mere six days after Everardo's capture. 2. State Department has claimed that it could not find this document because it did not have both names, or at least did not have both names spelled right. In fact a March 1993 State Department memo reports Harbury's first request for help, and notes both "Everardo" and "Efrain Bamaca Vela´squez" spelled correctly. Nevertheless, Harbury did not receive the March 18, 1992 CIA report, nor did Congress. 3. After Harbury's March 1993 request for help, U.S. officials did make inquiries. A State Department Chronology notes a mid-May 1993 report from Guatemalan military officials that they find the eye witness's account of seeing Bamaca alive to be credible, and that some 340-360 secret prisoners of war did in fact exist. Disturbingly, the full text of that mid-May report is also available. A key portion was left out of the official State chronology. That omitted portion states that one of the military officers reported that Bamaca was still alive. This was not reported to Harbury, to Congress, or to the OAS or the U.N. If the report is correct, this may well have been the last chance to save Bamaca's life, or the lives of the other secret prisoners. 4. In September 1993 Harbury had just opened the grave in Guatemala and was engaged in her first hunger strike in front of the Polytechnica. Ambassador McAffee had promised to look into the matter at once and get back to her with information. In September 1993 the DIA sent a letter to the State Department as well as to the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala (see second page). It states that Bamaca was not killed in combat, but was captured alive, interrogated many times, and killed. It also makes clear that clandestine prisoners have always existed in Guatemala, and the once the military "extracts" desired information from a secret prisoner, such prisoner is routinely executed without trial. Later, it was suggested that this letter somehow never arrived at State or the Embassy. However, a Nov. 9, 1994 memo notes that "a significant DIA report ... related to the Bamaca case was flagged for our attention by the Embassy Guatemala.... 11 so the Embassy clearly had received this report. 5. A Dec. 1993 Embassy memo describes an Embassy staffer's discussion with someone who Mr. Bamaca's military captors. The informant correctly listed the Santa Ana Berlin base as one of the places of Mr. Bamaca's detention. This confirmed Santiago Cabrera Lopez's story. Yet the information was never shared or reported. 6. A November 1994 letter from De Concini to Anthony Lake notes the CIA reports that Bamaca was captured alive, and suggests that this be shared with Harbury before she dies on her hunger strike in Guatemala. B. Nov. 1994-March 1995 During this time period, the 1160 Minutes" broadcast forced a change in the official U.S. position. officials now stated that intelligence sources indicated that Bamaca had indeed been captured alive, had been lightly but not seriously wounded, and that there was no evidence to show that he was still alive. When pressed for an explanation of such stilted wording, they stated that an intensive investigation was being carried out and that Bamaca had not been found alive, that there was nothing concrete to show he was dead, that they did not know what had become of him, and that they would assume he was alive for purposes of the investigation. The files show otherwise. 1. Preparation notes for Anthony Lake prior to his meeting with Harbury in Nov. 1994, state that there is reason to believe that the Guatemalan army operates clandestine prisons and may have captured and possibly executed him. 2. A Nov. 1994 bulletin from the Embassy to the State Department and the National Security Council, notes a credible report that Bamaca was assassinated by the army, probably "disposed of at sea". (referring to routine practice of tossing prisoners from helicopters). This recommends that the demarche state that Bamaca was captured alive, and killed. 3. Form letter from White House to Senator Barbara Mikulski, Nov. 1994, stating that Bamaca was captured alive in 1992, and that there is no information to show he is still alive. The letter also states that the information has been shared with Harbury, and that they will continue to press the army for the answers on the fate of Bamaca. 4. Nov. 30, 1994 memo giving guidance for public statements. This repeats the official story. Penned at the bottom is the statement "If asked: Did you have info he was thrown out of a helicopter?", the suggested response is "No that is not the case. We have been as forthcoming with Harbury as possible.... 11. 5. Nov. 1994 DIA document sent to Dept. of State, reports that Bamaca was held prisoner in San Marcos and interrogated by members of the military G-3 division. Names are given. It is also stated that Bamaca was drugged by army physicians and placed in a body cast to prevent his escape. The report also speculates that a number of the other prisoners of war may have been killed. This document was clearly given to the Embassy, because the last paragraph contains an Embassy comment. See also, below, the document criticizing State officials for not sharing this "startling" information sooner. 6. Dec. 30, 1994, comments on Harbury's radio interview. Harbury had stated she would not wait until her husband was tortured then thrown from a helicopter. Startled State staffer notes that the phrase "leapt out at me". 7. Dec, 1994 memo re Mike Wallace. Wallace apparently accused State Department of withholding information that Bamaca was indeed dead. The responding memo states "Good grief, I mean good grief.... 11 and recommends sticking with the official story. 8. Dec. 1994 notes : A State Department staffer writes that they told Harbury there was no information that Mr. Bamaca had been killed, and that she seemed to accept that. 9. January 1995 CIA memo to the White House and to the State Department, reports that Col. Alpirez killed Bamaca and that this is well known throughout higher level of army officials in Guatemala. Also enclosed are internal State memos regarding discussions as to what to do with this information and what to tell Harbury. 10. Heavily censored document of February 1995, noting information that Bamaca was placed in cast to prevent his escape. Report indicates frustration with the State Department for not sharing such "startling and important" information. 11. U.S. Embassy March 10, 1995 Press Conference. Spokesperson, when asked if there is new info on the Bamaca case as Harbury's third hunger strike was to begin soon, states that there is nothing new to add to their official position. 12. Ambassador McAffee's public speech, March 10, 1995, two days before Harbury's third hunger strike, states, "And the Bamaca case ... what happened there?" C. Post-Torricelli Disclosures 1. State Department notes that Rep. Richardson is outraged that he was not properly informed of the intelligence before he traveled to Guatemala on the case. 2. Internal memo to Watson, berating State for delays in divulging the information. 3. Internal memo stating that State officials were not legally proscribed from divulging the information to Harbury. As the executive branch, they had the power to declassify the info and give it to her. D. Re: Bamaca 1. Internal Report that Alpirez confessed that Bamaca had been a clandestine prisoner and was extrajudicially executed, to the Guatemalan Attorney General, who in turn failed to report this confession to the proper authorities. 2. Reports that Bamaca was repeatedly drugged by army physicians and placed in full body cast to prevent his escape. 3. Times report that Alpirez received ,000 in July of 1992. This is the same month the eye witness observed Alpirez torturing Everardo. 4. Reports on routine abuse and extrajudicial execution of other POWs. 5. Report that military leaders would block the Las Cabanas exhumation, because there were indeed human remains buried there, and they hoped to delay until the peace accords were signed and they would presumably receive an amnesty for human rights violations. IV. Conclusion High level State Department officials and other U.S. officials were fully aware of the fate of Efrain Bamaca Vela´squez as of the week of his 1992 capture. They were aware of both his legal name and his pseudonym and his relationship to U.S. citizen Jennifer Harbury no later than March 1993. They were informed that he and other secretly detained prisoners of war were still alive in the spring of 1993. When Harbury began her first hunger strike in September 1993, they had received clear information that Bamaca had been extrajudicially executed. This information continued to flow into their offices throughout Harbury's second and third hunger strikes. This information was not relayed to Harbury or to Congress or to inquiring human rights officials. NOTE: The Appearance of a Gringo... In late 1997 a former prisoner of war was able to escape, with great difficulty, from Guatemala. He too has seen Everardo during the early days of his capture, and his story squared fully with the testimony of Santiago Cabrera Lopez. He was also able to give the real names of several more of the G-2 officials involved in Mr. Bamaca's secret detention, torture and murder. Most chillingly, he described the participation of an internal G-2 death squad known as the "Comando", which also used such names as the Jaguar Avengers, and others. When Everardo was taken from the Santa Ana Berlin military base to the capital city in the spring of 1992, he was taken by helicopter. On board with him were two infamous Comando members. Also on board was a man about six feet tall with sandy hair, and light eyes. He also had very hairy arms...all very unusual for a Guatemalan. When I asked if this man might have been one of the few Guatemalans with such physical characteristics, the witness said no. If Guatemalan, he could only have been in the helicopter on such as top secret mission if he was with the Guatemalan army...yet his pilot's overalls had no required military insignia. When asked if there was anything else was noteworthy he replied that the man was wearing made in the USA combat boots. A second witness has confirmed the appearance of a gringo. When the CIA was asked if any key documents were being withheld, they admitted that they had not listed some four 1992 documents which directly related to Mr. Bamaca. He was alive during this time period and subjected to severe torture. These, the CIA continues to withhold.
Case of Comandante Everardo (Efrain Bamaca Velásquez) Status of Legal Proceedings 1. Case Against the Guatemalan Military The case for the abduction, secret detention, mental and physical torture, and extrajudicial execution, of Comandante Everardo, or Efrain Bamaca Velásqeuz, together with the related matters of obstruction of justice, first went to the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights of the Organization of American States. This case was filed with the Commission in 1993. The Commission carried out a lengthy investigation, then sent the case to the Inter-American Court in San José, Costa Rica for a full international trial. The trial began in the Court in May 1998, with a second evidentiary hearing held in November 1998. At the time of this writing, final briefs are being prepared by all parties, and a Court decision is hoped for this year. The Inter-American Court can only hold cases that are civil in nature, not criminal. 2. Case Against the United States Officials A federal civil rights case has also been filed against a number of United States officials in the State Department, White House, and the CIA. There are a variety of claims made under the constitution, international law and other statutes. One portion of the claims is based on the direct implication of certain U.S. officials in Everardo's torture and murder. Another portion is based upon the false statements made that no information existed, when in fact a report was received that he was still alive. For more details, see the document analysis below. The case is now pending in federal district court. 3. Freedom of Information Act Case Litigation will soon draw to a close. A great deal of information has been withheld. However, the files do tell a disturbing story. A detailed analysis is included below. In answer to the million dollar question, "Could we have saved Everardo if the truth had been revealed in a timely manner?" -- the files show that yes, we could have. A clear report was received by the CIA and passed on to the State Department and the White House in the spring of 1993. It stated that Everardo was still alive. Meanwhile, as we already know, Everardo was in the hands of several military officials on CIA payroll--in short, in our own hands. Yet the State Department form letter, responding to all inquiries, including those from Congressional offices, simply stated that there was no information about his fate. In short, yes, he and the other prisoners could have been saved. Instead, United States officials blocked their rescue. Once the truth was finally revealed, it was too late. The prisoners were dead.


A Letter for Sister Dianna: IT'S TIME TO STOP THE CIA by: Jose A. Carnevali-Doan EL PREGONERO (Washington, DC Archdiocesan newspaper) April 4, 1996 Translated by Marilu MacCarthy Sister Dianna: Your testimony in front of the White House last Sunday [Palm Sunday] left us terrified. Few words can equal the ugliness of the memories of torture which paralyzed us all. Your womanhood was humiliated and brutally used six years ago in ways in which need to be remembered. You were only 28 years old. "They took me to a clandestine prison where other Guatemalans were being horribly tortured. They tortured and raped me repeatedly. My back and chest were burned with cigarettes more than 111 times. They lowered me into a pit filled with bodies--bodies of children, women and men, some decapitated, some alive, others dead. All covered by a pack of rats. (...) I can't forget those that suffered with me and died in that prison. The memories of what I witnessed and lived through that day in November haunt me day and night. Even now, today, I can smell the decomposed bodies. I can hear the penetrating screams of others being tortured. (...) I demand the right to a resurrection, a future built on the foundations of truth and justice. My own experience is only a reflection of the suffering of many others." Six years have gone by, Sister, and the U.S. government still hasn't given you answers regarding its role in these events. Activists and religious consulted for this article in EL PREGONERO said that it's time to stop the CIA in its tracks and those who authorize its activities. Sister Alice Zachmann, director of the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission, explained that Dianna's demand for declassification concerns all the cases of human right's abuses in Guatemala since 1954, because "in that year the CIA was directly implicated in the overthrow of the only legitimate government that Guatemala ever had up to that time, and with that began a repression which still has not ended." "The CIA", Sister Zachmann declared, "is beyond itself... out of control. It has more authority than it should, and a multitude of books and investigations have proven with evidence its direct participation in campaigns of repression in countries like Guatemala." Thomas Quigley, political consultant on Latin America and Caribbean affairs for the Office of Peace and Justice of the U.S. Catholic Conference, said that the bishops are pressuring the Clinton Administration on different fronts in order to accelerate, as much as possible, Dianna's demands in search of the truth. The Conference fully supports the petition for declassification of the documents relative to Dianna Ortiz' case in Guatemala, and laments that an entire year has passed since President Clinton ordered an investigation of CIA papers, and still there is no clear, consistent response. Jennifer Harbury, wife of assassinated Mayan leader Efra!n B maca, can't explain how it's possible that the government of our country has financed, with our tax dollars, secret, criminal activities and has done so, additionally, against its own citizens, like you, Sister Dianna. Father Joe Nangle, a Franciscan priest, was with you in Guatemala in 1990 helping you to put pressure on the Guatemalan government to shed light on your case and discover the truth. The head of the army at that time, General Hctor Gramajo, and the Minister of Justice, another military man, accused you of having burned yourself on your back and chest in a sadomasochistic affair. "Then President Cerezo used almost the same language in talking about you, even though later that same year, they issued written retractions of their declarations, admitting they had no basis for that testimony." Father Nangle explained that ex-president Jimmy Carter was the first to completely cut off military and economic aid to Guatemala, in consternation of the overwhelming testimony and proof of the continual, violent campaign against human rights financed with money and arms from the United States. In reality, explained Thomas Quigley, what the Carter Administration stipulated was that "they would condition aid on a great improvement in Guatemala's human rights record, a demand which made Guatemala look for aid in other places." Asked what was a "gringo" doing in your torture chamber, and how was it that the CIA collaborated directly in the torture and subsequent death of B maca, Quigley said, "The problem is that the organization (C.I.A.) has acquired a life of its own", free from the normal controls that it ought to submit to in a democratic society. Your lawyer, Anna Gallagher, told EL PREGONERO that your case and the entire issue of human rights are "very sensitive" subjects for the Administration. "Our country, the United States, is the most democratic country in the world," she said. "Nevertheless, we continue giving aid to criminal regimes." Gallagher mentioned the cases of several Central American countries, especially Honduras and Guatemala. After the Carter episode, Guatemala, as you well know, Sister, rapidly found other arms providers and financial aid. *Numerous materials and academic studies exist which document the help offered by Israel in gratitude for Guatemala's vote in 1948 at the United Nations in favor of the creation of the Israeli state. * Experts, we consulted, explained that, besides the United States, Israel has helped lots of repressive, dictatorial regimes in Central America "to woo them, and in that manner, get their supportive votes at the U.N. in some matters key to Israel." Sister Dianna: Rachel Garst knows a lot about your case. She's the Guatemala contact for WOLA (Washington Office on Latin America) and confirmed that Israel "did, indeed, give military help to Guatemala in the 1980s, especially in the last years of that decade. Various documents from WOLA to which EL PREGONERO had access prove that relationship. A cable from the news agency, CERIGUA, dated December 14, 1992, states: "The Minister of Defense, General Jos Garc!a, confirmed today that the Prime Minister of Israel, Isaak Rabin, approved a loan of military advisers to the Guatemalan army and the sale of modern equipment. Additionally, Israel will contribute training and technical help to Guatemalan soldiers." The journalist, Margaret Hooks, in an investigation published in Mexico City on May 14, 1987, wrote that each time the U.S. cuts military aid to some Central American nation (usually for human rights violations), Israel jumps in to fill the vacuum. "At the end of the 1970s, Israel became the principal supplier of arms to Guatemala after the Carter Administration conditioned their help on the improvement of human rights." Even so, the president of exterior relations for the Israeli Parliament from 1977 to 1984, Yohanah Ramati, made a statement to the press during a visit to the U.S. declaring that, "the only regime that Israel would not consider helping would be one that was anti-American." Margaret Hooks insists that the participation of Israel in Guatemala has gone far beyond the simple supplying of weapons. "High-level Guatemalan military officials have described Israel as their closest ally and principal source of information and help." Finally, Sister Dianna, an academic study, dated 1985, under the general title "The U.S., Israel, and Guatemala: Interests and Conflicts," indicates that "the policy of Washington from 1954 until 1977 was to support counterinsurgency by helping with weapons and advisers. Rachel Garst (WOLA) emphasizes, however, that the CIA has continued helping and covering up for the Guatemalan intelligence agencies despite the terrible violations of human rights. "That's why," she adds, "it's so important to declassify all the information in the hands of the U.S. concerning these violations." It's been six years, Sister, since that terrible day in Guatemala City. An anniversary which recalls for us the reality of a country that, with the approval of the U.S., has seen the destruction of 440 mayan villages (including their entire populations), the disappearance of more than 47,000 citizens and the murder of 150,000 others, as well as the systematic use of torture, rape, mass graves, ethnic cleansing and drug trafficking on the part of the military. Sister Dianna, you went to Guatemala as a missionary to teach poor children how to read and write. Today, there are 172 men and women in mission in Guatemala, according to data supplied by Fr. Ted Keating, director of the Office of Justice and Peace of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, an organization charged with looking out for the security and welfare of more than 5,000 religious men and women throughout the world. "Our main concern is centered on Sister Dianna. Hers is one of the worst cases we've ever seen." Asked whether if your ongoing vigil will cause the documents to be declassified soon, Fr. Keating sharply responded: "Her torture has lasted six years already. Should she wait even longer?" Dear Sister: the religious of the Hispanic Catholic Center, profoundly moved by your testimony, are with you in prayer and (as you already know) also present in Lafayette Park. The Benegas Sisters, Pilar and many others, are planning various support activities. Know that there are many people who are suffering and fighting with you. The director of the Hispanic Pastoral Affairs for the Archdiocese of Washington, Margarita Roque, expressed great respect for you and offers her unconditional support, indicating that "your reports of torture profoundly touch our hearts, and the hearts of all Christians, especially during this Holy Week and Easter when we commemorate the deepest mysteries of our faith." Sister Margaret Cafferty, director of Leadership of Women Religious, was with you in Guatemala in 1992, putting pressure on the government so that your case would not go unpunished. Sister Cafferty's organization, with 960 religious women, has given you their support from the moment they learned of your escape from Guatemala with the help of the Papal Nuncio. To flee your captors, you jumped out of a jeep in a traffic jam in the middle of Guatemala City. You were being driven by "Alejandro," the man your torturers referred to as their "boss", to the American Embassy. "We're very worried for Sister Dianna and for all the Guatemalan and North American nuns who have been or could be victims in the future of any type of abuse," said Cafferty. Don't cry anymore, Sister! Don't cry anymore! No, no, don't cry anymore! Because you are full of grace and God is with you. You are blessed among women. God admires your unquenchable thirst for Justice and Truth. In Guatemala, you are already a symbol of the Kingdom of Peace, a peace which will soon arrive with the strength, the color and the freedom--symbolized by the beautiful, sacred plumage of the Quetzal. God willing..
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/guatemala-nun.html


... http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/guatemala-nun.html ----------------------------------------------------April 5, 1996. Hillary Clinton Meets With Nun on Guatemalan Human-Rights Abuses .ASHINGTON -- Hillary Rodham Clinton met Thursday with an American nun who was kidnapped and raped in Guatemala in 1989 and has been protesting outside the White House since Sunday in an effort to see government files relating to her case and to other human-rights abuses. Mrs. Clinton met the nun, Sister Dianna Ortiz, for half an hour to express her concern and the determination of President Clinton to get her the information she is seeking, a White House spokesman, David Johnson, said on Thursday night. Sister Ortiz began a silent vigil in Lafayette Park across from the White House last Sunday, accompanied by several hundred supporters. She said that her rape and torture may have been witnessed by an American operative in Guatemala, while the United States was assisting and training the Guatemalan security forces, and she demanded that Clinton "declassify all U.S. government information related to human rights abuses in Guatemala from 1954 to the present." Clinton wrote to her on March 29 promising to release "all appropriate information," and the staff director of the National Security Council, Nancy Soderberg, has also met with Sister Ortiz, a member of the Roman Catholic Ursuline order who went to Guatemala in 1987. SOURCE:The New York Times,1996. http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~pavr/harbury/archive/1996/040796c.html