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 A marker notes one of five skeletons exhumed from a mass grave in an attempt to solve crimes committed by the US-trained Honduran Battalion 316. |
| Several recently declassified US military training manuals show how US agents taught repressive techniques and promoted the violation of human rights throughout Latin America and around the globe. The manuals provide the paper trail that proves how the US trained Latin American and other militaries to infiltrate and spy upon civilians and groups, including unions, political parties, and student and charitable organizations; to treat legal political opposition like armed insurgencies; and to circumvent laws on due |
process, arrest, and detention. In these
how-to guides, the US advocates tactics such
as executing guerrillas, blackmail, false
imprisonment, physical abuse, using truth
serum to obtain information, and paying
bounties for enemy dead. Counterintelligence
agents are advised that one of their functions
is "recommending targets for neutralization,"
a euphemism for execution or destruction.
On September 20, 1996, the Pentagon released seven training manuals prepared |
by the US military and used between 1987 and 1991 for
intelligence training courses in Latin America
and at the US Army School of the Americas
(SOA), where the US trains Latin American
militaries. The Bush administration withdrew
the manuals in 1991 because of belated
concerns about their content and conducted an
internal investigation. The manuals, however,
were kept under wraps.
The Pentagon press release accompanying a selection of excerpts from the manuals |
| downplayed their significance, citing the conclusions of the 1991-92 investigation that "two dozen short passages in six of the manuals, which total 1,169 pages, contained material that either was not or could be interpreted not to be consistent with US policy." The SOA also played a damage control game, describing the manuals as merely containing several passages with "words or phrases inconsistent with US government policy." The problem with the seven Army manuals, however, is not a few stray words but a deeply |
anti-democratic framework. Moreover,
they were not the only ones.
In a separate quest for information on US connections to the training of Honduran Battalion 316 that disappeared some 200 people in the 1980s, the Baltimore Sun had filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for US training manuals used in Honduras. In January 1997, right after the Baltimore Sun threatened to sue over lack of response to its FOIA request, the US government released two |
CIA manuals that contained even more heinous
material than the seven Army manuals.
Then, on March 6, the Washington Post ran a story revealing that the seven Army manuals had even deeper roots. They were based on an older set of training materials known as "Project X," written by US Army experts starting in 1965. The Joint Foreign Intelligence Assistance Program used Project X to train US allies in Vietnam, Iran, Latin America, and other parts of the developing |
| world. With this parentage established, it became irrefutable that the seven Army manuals were not an aberration. Rather, they were but one part of a consistent lending library on repressive techniques used by the United States to train foreign militaries. Prepared by the US military and used between 1987 and 1991 for intelligence training courses in Latin America and at the SOA, the seven texts drew from lesson plans school instructors had been using since 1982 and incorporated material going back to the 1960s. The manuals |
directly contradict the often issued official
excuse that SOA graduates who perpetrated many
of the worst massacres of the hemisphere were
"a few bad apples" who did not reflect school
teachings or US policy.
They were released as the result of extensive public and congressional pressure. The first official mention came in the president's advisory Intelligence Oversight Board's June 1996 report on Guatemala, which was made public in response to the high level of |
pressure from human rights and grassroots
organizations. Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.),
interested because of his championship of a
bill to close the SOA, then asked the
administration to declassify the manuals in
their entirety.
The manuals' discovery has helped reinvigorate grassroots, religious, and congressional efforts to close the US Army School of the Americas. It proves on paper what so many have said for so long that US training contributed |
| to the devastating human rights violations in the region. Although Latin American militaries were perfectly capable of violating human rights and democratic principles without US sponsorship, the anti-democratic training methods advocated by the US provided at the very least a green light for repression. And for decades, the traffic was heavy. Techniques of control contained in the manuals were actively adopted by Latin American militaries, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s; in Chile's and Argentina's "dirty wars" in which thousands of dissidents disappeared; by |
military dictatorships in Brazil, Paraguay,
and Uruguay; in the Central American wars,
where tens of thousands of civilians were
killed; and in the Andean countries, where
human rights violations still abound. In most
cases, the militaries being trained not only
suppressed armed rebellion but also repressed
democratic, civic opposition.
PAPER TRAIL |
infiltrate and suppress even democratic
political dissident movements and hunt down
opponents in every segment of society in the
name of fighting Communism," according to the
Washington Post.
At least some of these teaching materials were pulled from circulation by the Carter administration, which was concerned they would contribute to human rights abuses in Latin America. In 1982, the Reagan administration asked the SOA to rush out a new counterintelligence course for Latin American |
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militaries. The instructor asked to develop
the course, Capt. Vic Tise, turned to Project
X materials, stored at Fort Huachuca, Arizona,
and updated them into lesson plans.
In 1987, the 470th Military Intelligence Brigade took the SOA lesson plans and turned them into textbooks: Handling of Sources, Guerillas and Communist Ideology, Counter- intelligence, Revolutionary War, Terrorism and the Urban Guerilla, Interrogation, Combat Intelligence, and Analysis I. These manuals were then used by US trainers in Latin America |
and distributed to Latin American intelligence
schools in Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador,and
Peru. They came full circle back to the SOA in
1989 when they were reintroduced as reading
materials in military intelligence courses
attended by students from Bolivia, Colombia,
Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador,
Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Peru,and
Venezuela. The US government estimates that as
many as 1,000 copies may have been distributed
at the SOA and throughout Latin America.
From start to finish, six of the |
seven Army manuals are how-to-guides on repressive techniques. Throughout their 1,100 plus pages, there are few mentions of democracy, human rights, or the rule of law. Instead, there are detailed techniques for infiltrating social movements,interrogating suspects, surveillance, maintaining military secrecy, recruiting and retaining spies, and controlling the population. While the excerpts released by the Pentagon to the press are a useful and not misleading selection of the most egregious passages the ones most clearly advocating torture, execution, and blackmail they do |
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not reveal the manuals'
highly objectionable framework. In the name of
defending democracy, the manuals advocate
profoundly undemocratic methods. Just as
objectionable as the methods they advocate is
the fundamental disregard for the differences
between armed insurgencies and lawful
political and civic opposition an attitude
that led to the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of Latin American civilians.
OPPOSITION REVOLUTION |
counterintelligence targets "local or national political party teams, or parties that have goals, beliefs or ideologies contrary or in opposition to the National Government," or "teams or hostile organizations whose objective is to create dissension or cause restlessness among the civilian population in the area of operations." This text recommends that the army create a "blacklist" of "persons whose capture and detention are of foremost importance to the armed forces." It should include not only "enemy agents" but also "subversive persons," "political leaders known |
or suspected as hostile toward the Armed
Forces or the political interests of the
National Government," and "collaborators and
sympathizers of the enemy," known or suspect.
Throughout, the manuals highlight refugees and displaced persons as possible subversives to be monitored. They describe universities as breeding grounds for terrorists, and identify priests and nuns as terrorists. They advise militaries to infiltrate youth groups, student groups, labor unions, political parties, and community organizations. |
|
Even electoral activity is suspect: The
insurgents "can resort to subverting the
government by means of elections in which the
insurgents cause the replacement of an
unfriendly government official to one
favorable to their cause"; "insurgent
activity" can include funding campaigns and
participating in political races as
candidates.
One of the most pernicious passages, in Combat Intelligence, lists ways to identify guerrilla presence. "Indicators of an imminent |
attack by guerillas" include demonstrations by minority groups, reluctance by civilians including children to associate with US or their local troops, celebrations of national or religious festivals, or the presence of strangers. "Indicators of control by guerillas" over a certain civilian population include the refusal to provide intelligence to government forces or the construction of new houses. Indications that insurgents are conducting psychological operations include accusations of government corruption, circulating petitions, attempts to discredit the |
government or armed forces, calling government
leaders US puppets, urging youth to avoid the
draft, demonstrations or strikes, or
accusations of police or army brutality. As a
helpful hint, this manual recommends drawing
maps using different colors to depict the
civilian population as "loyal to the
government," "ambivalent," "possibly loyal to
the insurgents," and "areas controlled by the
insurgents."
LEGAL AND HUMAN RIGHTS CONSIDERATIONS |
| and human rights considerations appear to have been added after the fact or in a superficial manner. Mention of the Geneva Convention is inserted at the beginning of Interrogation, while Counterintelligence, when dealing with interrogation techniques, repeatedly refers to the rights of the suspect. In most of the manuals, however, discussion of rights is not integrated into the text or is contradicted in other passages. In some cases, human rights conventions are distorted. Readers are taught, for example, that an insurgent "Does not have a legal status as a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention," |
implying that there are no
international conventions covering humane
treatment.
In most of the discussions of techniques, however, legal considerations are simply absent. Over and over, the manuals treat detention without noting proper procedures for obtaining admissible evidence or for arresting or bringing suspects to trial. There is no mention of warrants or the right to contact an attorney or of any comparable local laws. Indeed, it is recommended throughout that detainees be kept in isolation, often it is |
clear from the descriptions in several
manuals in clandestine jails. Interrogators
are advised to use false names. Few
distinctions are made between the treatment of
armed guerrillas and civilians. At no time do
the manuals state that the person detained or
arrested must first be suspected of having
committed a crime or even be told the reason
for the arrest. The only rationale needed for
arrest or detention is that the intelligence
agent wants information the detainees may
have.
A PURELY MILITARY RESPONSE |
| too, are often viewed simply as impediments to military control. With no mention of the propriety of the practices, a number of the manuals advocate controlling information through censorship as well as by spying on and infiltrating civilian groups. In general, the population is a source of information at best, an enemy force at worst. The civilian government fares little better; it is one more entity to be reported on or pushed aside. Ways to impose curfews, military checkpoints, house-to-house searches, ID cards, and rationing are presented without reference to |
laws or the role of the legislature. Indeed,
there is little discussion of the proper
relationship between a civilian government and
military authorities.
Much more effort is put into the role of the army in quashing revolutionary tendencies. Several of the manuals teach militaries and intelligence services how insurgencies develop and how to control them. The description of the former is generally simplistic and dated, with few references to the role official |
repression plays in fueling insurrection. The
brief histories of El Salvador and Guatemala,
for example, in Terrorism and the Urban
Guerilla skip over repression, human rights
violations, or problems in democratic
governance that contributed to the growth of
revolutionary movements. Insurgents are
reduced to manipulators of popular discontent,
in thrall to Soviet-style Marxism.
While Combat Intelligence offers a more sophisticated explanation of the underlying reasons for revolutionary movements such as |
|
the strains created by rapid modernization,
the existence of corrupt elites and government
repression neither this manual nor any other
suggests steps a civilian government might
take as a political response to popular
discontent. There is no limitation on when to
use military and counterintelligence methods.
FROM BAD TO WORSE: |
by US agents against perceived Soviet subversion. (KUBARK was the CIA's codename for itself.) While it was not intended to train foreign military services, its successor, Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual 1983, which drew heavily on material in KUBARK, was used in at least seven US training courses conducted in Latin American countries between 1982 and 1987, according to a June 1988 memo placed inside the manual. This 1983 manual originally surfaced in response to a June 1988 congressional hearing which was prompted by allegations by the New York Times that the US had taught Honduran military officers who used torture. |
The 1988 hearing was not the first
time such manuals had surfaced. In 1984, a CIA
manual for training the Nicaraguan Contras in
psychological operations created a
considerable scandal.
These two CIA textbooks deal exclusively with interrogation and devote an entire chapter each to "coercive techniques." Human Resource Exploitation recommends surprising suspects in the predawn hours, arresting, blindfolding, and stripping them naked. Suspects should be |
| held incommunicado, it advises, and deprived of normal routines in eating and sleeping. Interrogation rooms should be windowless, soundproof, dark, and without toilets. The manuals do admonish that torture techniques can backfire and that the threat of pain is often more effective than pain itself. However, they then go on to describe coercive techniques "to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist." These techniques include prolonged constraint, prolonged exertion, extremes of heat, cold, or |
moisture, deprivation of food or sleep,
disrupting routines, solitary confinement,
threats of pain, deprivation of sensory
stimuli, hypnosis, and use of drugs or
placebos.
According to the Baltimore Sun, "the methods taught in the 1983 manual and those used by [the US-trained Honduran] Battalion 316 in the early 1980s show unmistakable similarities." The paper cites the case of Ines Murillo, a Honduran prisoner who claimed she was held in secret jails in 1983, given no food or water |
for days, and kept from sleeping by having
water poured on her head every ten minutes.
Dismissive of the rule of law, Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual 1983 states the importance of knowing local laws on detention but then notes, "Illegal detention always requires prior [headquarters] approval." The manual also refers to one or two weeks of "practical work" with prisoners as part of the course, suggesting that US trainers may have worked with Latin American militaries in interrogating actual detainees. This reference | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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gives new support to the claims by Latin
Americans held as prisoners and by US nun
Dianna Ortiz, tortured by the Guatemalan army
in 1989, that US personnel were present in
interrogation and torture rooms.
In 1985, in a superficial attempt to correct the worst of the 1983 manual, a page advising against using coercive techniques was inserted and handwritten changes were haphazardly introduced into the text. For example, "While we do not stress the use of coercive techniques, we do want to make |
you aware of them and the proper way to use them," has been
coyly altered to, "While we deplore the use of
coercive techniques, we do want to make you
aware of them so that you may avoid them."
But the entire chapter on coercive techniques
is still included, again with some items
crossed out. Throughout, the reader can easily
read the original underneath the "corrected"
items. These corrections were made in response
to the 1984 scandal when the CIA training
manual for the Contras hit the headlines.
The second manual, KUBARK Counterintelligence |
Interrogation, is clearly the source of much
of the 1983 manual; some passages are lifted
verbatim. KUBARK has a similar section on
coercive techniques, and includes some even
more abhorrent elements, such as two
references to the use of electric shock. For
example, one passage requires US agents
toobtain "prior Head- quar- ters approval ...
if bodily harm is to be inflicted," or "if
medical, chemical, or electrical methods" are
to be used. A third condition for obtaining
prior approval is, ominously, whited out.
MUCH SPIN, LITTLE OVERSIGHT |
| have tried to smooth the waters of public outrage when training manuals were discovered the Nicaraguan Contra and Honduras manuals in the 1980s, now the Army and CIA manuals with a combination of spin control and cosmetic change. In late 1991, under the Bush administration, the Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight launched an investigation into the seven Army manuals. The resulting report to the congressional intelligence committees concluded that the manuals' authors and SOA instructors |
"erroneously assumed that the manuals, as well
as the lesson plans, represented approved
doctrine." When interviewed by the
investigators, the manuals' authors claimed
that they believed intelligence oversight
regulations applied only to Americans and not
to the training of foreign personnel in
other words, that US instructors could teach
abusive techniques to foreign militaries that
they could not legally perform themselves.
The Bush administration ordered the retrieval and destruction |
of the manuals, and the US
Southern Command advised Latin American
governments that the handbooks did not
represent official US policy. However, the
whole episode was treated as an isolated
incident. The individuals responsible for
writing and teaching the lesson plans were not
disciplined, nor were the authors and
instructors who believed teaching human
rights violations was consistent with US
policy retrained.
In 1992, the Office of the Assistant to the |
|
Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
Oversight did issue recommendations that "the
Joint Staff should establish a policy to
ensure that intelligence and
counterintelligence training for foreign
military personnel by Combatant Commands is
consistent with US and DoD policy," and that
training materials should go through proper
channels for approval. However, these
recommendations were never enforced.
IGNORANCE AS A DEFENSE |
on the Clinton administration's watch, the administration so far has failed to send a clear message repudiating such training methods and to take decisive action to ensure that such materials are never developed again. On February 21, 1997, the Department of Defense's inspector general completed another investigation. It admitted that in creating and using the seven army manuals "from 1982 through early 1991, many mistakes were made and repeated by numerous and continuously changing personnel in several organizations from Panama to Georgia to Washington, D.C." Without apparent irony, |
the report concludes that there is no "evidence that a deliberate
and orchestrated attempt was made to violate
DOD or U.S. Army policies."
The report claims that because these numerous US personnel did not know that it was against US policy to train Latin American militaries to use threats or force with prisoners, "neutralize" opponents, hold prisoners in clandestine jails, and infiltrate and spy upon civilian organizations and opposition political parties all techniques described in the |
|
manuals no disciplinary action was
deemed necessary. The report, which Rep.
Kennedy termed a "whitewash" and "hogwash,"
does not examine any systemic problem that
might have led to "numerous and continuously
changing personnel" over a ten-year period
lacking a working knowledge of human rights.
*26 Thus, the report fails to assign either
individual or collective responsibility for
training Latin American militaries to violate
human rights and use profoundly
anti-democratic methods.
While the report concludes that the lesson |
plans and manuals somehow escaped oversight
and could not be read because they were in
Spanish, Rep. Kennedy's own investigation
reveals these as mere dog-ate-my-homework
excuses. Kennedy's report states that SOA
instructors sent their lesson plans to Fort
Huachuca and to at least two offices in
Washington to be reviewed, although the
question of whether they were approved in
Washington continues to be disputed. Moreover,
the materials were approved for use in English
before being translated into Spanish.
The report does demonstrate that |
little was done to implement the recommendations stemming
from the 1991 investigation. In three agencies
to which they were simply circulated as a
memo, there was no record of it having even
been received. In three others, it was
received but did not result in any increase in
oversight of foreign military and intelligence
training. However, the report merely calls for
the memo to be reissued as a "directive,"
rather than stimulating a serious discussion
within the military and setting up workable
oversight mechanisms.
All of the investigations into the various |
| sets of manuals have been hampered by their basic premise: the disingenuous assumption that these manuals did not represent official US policy and somehow slipped through the cracks. But it was official US policy to train and arm repressive forces in Latin America, Vietnam, and other developing countries. The manuals fit squarely within that framework. | The slow, piecemeal surfacing of these manualsand the limited investigations at each point suggest that there may be many other inappropriate training materials still in circulation. Materials from the most intense days of the Cold War in the 1960s, which should never have been created in the first place, kept on being repackaged and reused despite a series of | and scandals investigations that should have forced a full-scale review. That these manuals were used until recently in this hemisphere, however, is hardly shocking. They merely confirm what many long knew about US support for repressive militaries in Latin America. They prove that the United States not only provided the guns and the money for repression; the United States also supplied the textbooks. |
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