Guatemala 1954 PBSUCCESS
The CIA, on June 18, 1954, led the coup in Guatemala that overthrew the Communist-dominated regime of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Frank G. Wisner, CIA. Deputy Director for Plans, had the major responsibility for carrying out the operation. CIA agents trained and supported the forces of Colonel Carlos Castillo-Armas who assumed power after the defeat of Arbenz. Agency support included the provision of CIA-piloted World War II fighter-bombers, as well as guns and ammunition.
The perceived success of the operation in Iran undoubtedly contributed to the administration's decision later in the 1954 to begin planning a similar kind of operation in Guatemala. The popularly elected president ofthe country, Jacobo Arbenz, had expropriated the property of several large UScorporations and had allowed the communist party to gain a substantial foot-hold within the country. An NIE published in April 1954 had, in fact, warned that "communists now effectively control the political life of Guatemala." When CIA learned in May that Arbenz had obtained Soviet-made military equipment from Czechoslovakia, it proved too much for Eisenhower, who directed CIA to mount an operation to overthrow him.
The United Fruit Company (UFCO) developed an unprecedented relationship with Guatemala in the first half of this century. By 1944, UFCO owned 566,000 acres, employed 20,000 people, and operated 96% of Guatemala's 719 miles of railroad, making the multinational corporation Guatemala's largest private landowner and biggest employer.
Throughout this period the United Fruit Company was seeking support from the government in Washington. The administration of Harry S Truman sought to assist the company through diplomatic channels but with no apparent success. The administration of Dwight D. Ei senhower, who took office in January 1953, was more eager to help the company. John Foster Dulles. the new secretary of state. had as a private lawyer represented the company in negotiations with Guatemala in the 1930s; Allen Dulles. the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). had for several years served on the board of directors of the United Fruit Company, as had the incoming assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, John Moors Cabot, whose brother was a former president of the company. In addition. Henry Cabot Lodge, the ambassador to the UN, was à stockholder in the company, and the husband of President Eisenhower's personal sec retary was the company's public relations director.
In 1953 the new Eisenhower administration was in the process of intensifying and expanding the existing policy that was based on the " containment of communism.” In the 1953-55 period Secretary of State Dulles engaged in negotiations that resulted in a series of treaties and pacts with countries in Western Europe, the Middle East and South Asia, and Southeast Asia. In addition. the political climate in the United States was such that reform movements abroad were viewed as suspect and dangerous, and any manifestation of anti-Americanism was condemned as communist inspired. The situation in Guatemala was exacerbated because there were in fact communists present who were playing with some success upon the people's grievances. For these and related reasons, the new administration convinced itself, although not its European allies. that a grave threat to Western Hemispheric se curity existed in Guatemala.
In August 1953 President Eisenhower approved the setting in motion of plans to depose Arbenz. In late June 1954 Arbenz took political asylum in the embassy of Mexico and shortly thereafter went into exile. Although several versions of the events of the intervening 10 months soon gained currency in Latin America and the United States, a detailed narrative was not available until the publication in 1982 of Bitter Fruit, a book written by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer. In addition to interviews with individuals who had direct knowledge of the events. the authors secured thousands of documents from several United States government agencies and bureaus.
To carry out the coup, the Agency trained a small group of Guatemalan exiles in Honduras, under the leadership of former Guatemalan army colonel, Carlos Castillo Armas, and provided them with several aircraft, flown by CIA pilots. When the operation began in June 1954, the small exile force entered Guatemala and set up camp near the border. The CIA-provided aircraft carried out limited bombing runs and "buzzed" a number of Guatemalan towns and cities. At the same time, the Agency began an elaborate deception operation with the support of other US entities in Guatemala, using what appeared to be radio broadcasts between rebel forces to make it seem that a large invasion force was moving toward the capital.
The operation launched by the CIA under the code name Operation Success required, among other things. a Guatemalan to replace Ar benz. Ydigoras who in 1958 was elected president, claimed that he was offered the post but refused. The CIA then decided on Colonel Castillo Armas, who had led an abortive uprising after the assassination of Arana and was, in exile. a bitter enemy of Arbenz. During early 1954 the CIA organizers pulled together a ragtag group of exiles to serve as an “ invading army” and created an air support force of aging World War II aircraft. (The Guatemalan Air Force consisted of a few pre-1936 United States Army trainers.) The new United States ambassador to Guatemala, John E. Peurifoy, not only gave tough private warnings to President Arbenz and his foreign minister, Toriello, but also issued public warnings of the danger of a communist takeover in Guatemala.
In early 1954 Arbenz apparently concluded that the army would not support him against an invading force — which it in fact did not - and decided to seek weapons to create a popular militia. He ordered the weapons from Czechoslovakia, but the Guatemalan Army, alerted by CIA agents, intercepted the shipment at Puerto Barrios in May 1954. A few days later Secretary of State Dulles publicly decried the “Communist-type reign of terror” that existed in Guatemala.
On June 18, 1954, a C-47 flew over Guatemala City, bombing it with leaflets demanding that Arbenz resign and warning that a liberating army would soon invade the country. That night another old cargo plane flew over the city and machine-gunned various places. The next morning a P-47 strafed the airport. During the next few days the small force led by Colonel Castillo Armas had reached the city of Chiquimula. Ambassador Peurifoy intensified his contacts with the senior officers of Guatemala's armed forces, and on June 25 the military refused Arbenz' order to distribute arms to civilians to resist the invasion force. Over the next two days Peurifoy continued to negotiate with the army, and on June 27 President Arbenz made a radio broadcast in which he announced that he was relinquishing the presidency to Colonel Carlos Enrique Díaz, the army chief of staff.
Peurifoy then faced the task of persuading Colonel Díaz and his associates to accept Castillo Armas as the new head of government. The final negotiations took place in San Salvador on July 1. and on July 3 Peurifoy flew the new government of Guatemala back to Guatemala City in a United States air attaché plane. On July 8 Castillo Armas formally became president, and on July 13 the United States granted diplomatic recognition to the government it had installed.
On 27 June 1954, the chief of the Guatemalan armed forces, COL Carlos Enrique Diaz, met with US Ambassador John Peurifoy to plead that it be stopped. In return for the ambassador's assurance that it would be, Diaz agreed to lead a coup against Arbenz. Upon learning this later the same day, Arbenz himself stepped aside, and in the ensueing deliberations, the Guatemalan army agreed to accept Armas as the country's new president.
Muddled thinking about security and the doctrine of plausible denial was evident. PBSUCCESS, the ramshackle covert action that overthrew President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala, was supposed to be deniable by the US Government; but Tracy Barnes was so intent on getting the operation going that he disregarded basic security considerations in recruiting and establishing cover for the aircrews involved. The American public was not the target of the effort to maintain plausible denial but, given the cooperation of the US press, may have accepted the fiction that the US Government was not involved. The news accounts of the coup did not mention the Agency's role, althoughit was later alluded to in a column written by James Reston of the New York Times.
Even without confirmation in the press, however, it is likely that many in Congress suspected CIA's involvement and that its subcommitteeswere told. Although he did not have a specific recollection, CIA Legislative Counsel Pforzheimer said years later he was "sure the committees were informed [of the Guatemalan operation]" and there would have been "no holding back on details." DCI Dulles had earlier informed key members that Arbenz had purchased Soviet-made military equipment from Czechoslovakia. This had led to resolutions being passed overwhelmingly in each House condemning the action and urging action by the administration to deal with it. In private channels, the pressure coming from key legislators to do something about Arbenz was even stronger. Thus, when the coup actually occurred, it would have been natural for the Agency to tell its subcommittees what had happened, but no documentary evidence of such briefings exists. However it is thoroughly implausible that the subcommittees did not know something aboutwhat was happening there, given the congressional interest in Guatemala atthe time.
The widespread Yankee-Go-Home riots across Latin America in the week that Arbenz fell make it evident that, where it counted, plausible denial had not worked. As a reward for his prominent part in PBSUCCESS, Tracy Barnes was appointed chief of station/Germany, an ominous precedent for the service.
In early 1960 President Dwight Eisenhower gave his approval to a CIA-sponsored project to train Cuban exiles for the purpose: of overthrowing Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The Guatemalan President, Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, permitted the CIA to use his country for its training camp. In November 1960 a rebellion broke out in Guatemala against President Ydigoras. Because of his assistance to the CIA to that point the agency secretly came to his aid, sending its 8-26 bombers against the rebels. The insurgency was crushed and Ydigoras kept in power.
The CIA coup restored the country’s normal order that favors the economic and military interest of the dominant sectors of Guatemala and the US. It is an order kept in place through corruption, impunity and repression. In 1999, the United Nations’ Truth Commission report concluded that government repression was so calculated and widespread in certain Mayan regions of the country it amounted to genocide. Given the attention received by the Truth Commission report, U.S. President Bill Clinton was obliged to apologize: “For the United States, it is important that I clearly state that support for [Guatemalan] military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong. The United States must not repeat that mistake.”
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