THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 24, 1995 TAG: 9504220010
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
The CIA has a 40-year history in Guatemala. It helped organize a coup in 1954 that ousted an elected government and put a military junta in power. The excuse then was anti-communism. But what's the possible rationale in the 1990s for supporting a brutal regime that employs torture and murder against its own people?
There are very few cases in which the covert service of the U.S. government ought to be meddling in the internal affairs of other countries, particularly when it involves propping up tyrants, training their thugs, and covering up their crimes.
That appears to be the case in Guatemala. Jennifer Harbury is an American citizen whose husband, Bamaca Velasquez, was a guerrilla leader in Guatemala who disappeared. She thought the U.S. government knew something about his whereabouts. The government denied it. Rep. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., learned she was right. Bamaca was dead and a CIA-trained Guatemalan colonel was implicated in his death and that of an American innkeeper, Michael DeVine, who was killed in Guatemala in 1990.
As if that weren't bad enough, the agency apparently kept the facts from Congress and the White House. In fact, the problem may extend beyond the CIA. It has been reported that, after Torricelli announced Bamaca's death, the National Security Agency was shredding documents.
Now Torricelli is under attack for making the facts public. Speaker Newt Gingrich has condemned his behavior as ``totally unacceptable'' and has argued he ought to be thrown off the intelligence committee for not keeping classified material confidential. The House ethics committee will examine the case.
Torricelli says he didn't learn about the CIA in Guatemala from briefings but from government whistle blowers who thought someone elected to office ought to know what was secretly being done in the name of America.
The whistle blowers were right to come forward and Gingrich had better think again. There may be times when covert action is needed. But Guatemala doesn't look like one. It poses no threat to the security of the United States, and supporting the barbaric regime that has killed 140,000 of its own citizens is antithetical to our traditions and beliefs.
Even if a covert agency is needed, it needs to be scrupulously monitored to prevent it from going off on dangerous and embarrassing tangents. But oversight was lacking in these instances. The whistle blowers came forward because the president and other officials were saying one thing while the CIA, unbeknownst to them, was doing the opposite. This is the sort of out-of-control bureaucracy Republicans normally rail against.
An investigation is surely needed, but not so much of Torricelli as of the CIA. What was it doing in Guatemala, who approved it and why was neither the president nor Congress better informed? For example, military aid was cut off in 1990 to protest the murder of DeVine. This followed the earlier deaths of three other Americans, a nun and two journalists. It now turns out that covert aid continued to flow.
If the CIA is running itself, parts of our foreign policy are in the hands of a $30 billion-a-year shadow government accountable to no one. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., has argued that the non-defense intelligence apparatus was invented to meet the challenge of the Cold War and has outlived its purpose, regularly exceeds its authority and ought to be dismantled. Episodes like this make Moynihan's recommendations seem very sensible. by CNB