CIA's covert "Operation PBSUCCESS" Guatemala 1954

[formercia]

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/

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.

--snip--

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.

--snip--

With links to the official documents. Note the story line about the project not being implemented. Sound familiar?

[AntiFascist]

1. K&R n/t

[dipsydoodle]

2. For the background to this

you really need do no more than check out the Dulles brothers both of whom had connections to United Fruit. The main issue at the time was effectively the nationalisation of unused banana plantations.

John Foster Dulles - U.S. Secretary of State and Allen Welsh Dulles - Director of the CIA : both at that time.

Then check out United Fruit :

The U.S. State Department and United Fruit embarked on a major public relations campaign to convince the American people and the rest of the U.S. government that Guatemala was a Soviet "satellite".

"It began with enviable connections to the Eisenhower administration. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his former New York law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, had long represented the company. Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, had served on UFCO's board of trustees. Ed Whitman, the company's top public relations officer, was the husband of Ann Whitman, President Eisenhower's private secretary. (Ed Whitman produced a film, "Why the Kremlin Hates Bananas," that pictured UFCO fighting in the front trenches of the cold war.) The fruit firm's success in linking the taking of its lands to the evil of international communism was later described by one UFCO official as "the Disney version of the episode." But the company's efforts paid off. It picked up the expenses of journalists who traveled to Guatemala to learn United Fruit's side of the crisis, and some of the most respected North American publications - including the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and New Leader - ran stories that pleased the company. A UFCO public relations official later observed that his firm helped condition North American readers to accept the State Department's version of the Arbenz regime as Communist-controlled and the U.S.-planned invasion as wholly Guatemalan." (Quoted from Inevitable Revolutions - The United States in Central America by Walter La Feber, 2nd ed. 1993, pp. 120-121.

The campaign succeeded and in 1954 the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated a coup, code-named "Operation PBSUCCESS". The invading force numbered only 150 men under the command of Castillo Armas but the CIA convinced the Guatemalan public and President Arbenz that a major invasion was underway. The CIA set up a clandestine radio station to carry propaganda, jammed all Guatemalan stations, and hired skilled American pilots to bomb strategic points in Guatemala City. The U.S. replaced the freely elected government of Guatemala with another right-wing dictatorship that would again bend to UFCO's will.

http://www.mayaparadise.com/ufc1e.htm

[formercia]

8. Agreed.

Thank you for posting that. :hi:

[Wednesdays]

3. K&R

:kick:

[bobthedrummer]

4. Additional National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Books that sound familiar.

Electronic Briefing Book 122
"Prisoner Abuse: Patterns From The Past"
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/index.htm

Electronic Briefing Book 127
"The Interrogation Documents: Debating U.S. Policy and Methods"
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/index.htm

[abq e streeter]

5. K& R ---even many informed progressives don't know this story

I myself really only knew the the most rudimentary outlines of it...

[formercia]

7. Before the Internet

unless someone published it, it just faded into distant memory.

[formercia]

6. Is Honduras going the same way?

or is this just a one-trick-pony ops plan?

[Judi Lynn]

9. Thank you for the excellent link, also dipsydoodle & bobthedrummer for theirs. Bookmarking. n/t

[formercia]

10. Anatomy of a coup in great detail from cables:

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/ike/guat/20180.htm

Foreign Relations, Guatemala, 1952-1954

Released by the Office of the Historian
Docs 164-205

164. Telegram From the CIA Station in to Operation PBSUCCESS Headquarters in Florida/1/

, May 30, 1954, 1833Z.

/1/Source: Central Intelligence Agency, Job 79-01025A, Box 13, Folder 4. Secret; Routine; RYBAT; PBSUCCESS. Repeated to the Director of Central Intelligence.

382. From Cadick.

Request identities and available info on four persons discussed with for early eradication. Confirm early date.

--snip--


Lots more.

[Joanne98]

11. Sounds real familiar. Honduras anyone?

[formercia]

12. You noticed that.......

New generation, same playbook.....

[formercia]

13. Kick.

Just to make sure nobody misses the show.

[formercia]

14. CIA AND GUATEMALA ASSASSINATION PROPOSALS 1952-1954

CIA AND GUATEMALA ASSASSINATION PROPOSALS 1952-1954]