Guatemala and the CIA

The Washington Times, April 4, 1995

Seems like deja vu all over again. The rogue CIA
accused of hiring and keeping on its payroll – and then
protecting – an informant the agency knew was responsible
for the death of one American citizen and of a guerrilla
leader married to another American citizen; sanctions
against the evil (though on its way perhaps to being
somewhat less evil) Latin American country where the
dastardly deeds took place; accusations on the Hill, and
from the White House, of a CIA cover-up; congressional
hearings in the offing.

Why, we’ve even been treated to the touching tale, as
relayed by the New York Times, of the courtship of
Jennifer Harbury, the American lawyer-wife, and Efrain
Bamaca Velasques, her Guatemalan
guerrilla-leader-husband: “Theirs was the most
improbable of intimacies. The first time they touched was
in an awkward dance in a rebel camp on the slope of a
volcano, he, blushing furiously with a machete still
slung over one shoulder, she, nervous, too, but laughing
anyway and unwilling to pull back.” This particular
form of romanticization by the American press of
communist insurgents – particularly in Latin America -is
certainly nothing new.

Nor is any of the rest of it. The demonization of the
CIA, of various Latin American (and other authoritarian)
countries it operated in, and, indeed, of U.S. policy in
virtually any area threatened by communism, was pretty
much standard fare among those who objected to an active
anti-communist role for the U.S. But it’s not the ’60s or
the ’70s or even the ’80s anymore. So, for the record, a
few differences we might all bear in mind.

First of all, no one has any business any more
glorifying communist terrorists; they never did, of
course, but at least they could pretend ignorance of the
viciousness of those terrorists and the regimes they
inflicted when their insurgencies succeeded. That kind of
pretense is no longer possible after the collapse of
Soviet communism. So we have every reason to know just
what Efrain Bamaca was and what kind of future he
envisioned for his country. His marriage to an American,
particularly one as fervently committed to his cause as
Ms. Harbury, changes that not one whit. Not, of course,
that one should wish a death while in custody even on
communist guerrillas. But one should be aware, as Ms.
Harbury doubtless was, that an untimely and unpleasant
death is an occupational hazard when your line of work is
violently overthrowing a government.

And then there’s the matter of the CIA. No matter how
much some people might wish it not to be so, the CIA is a
bunch of spies. Their job is to spy on foreign
governments, and, when deemed necessary by the president,
conduct covert operations. That they recruit informants –
particularly military informants – with
less-than-spotless records should not come as a surprise.
We might desire a rather more successful level of
information, and particularly analysis, than the CIA has
been managing to come up with recently – though the
question does arise as to how much the politically
inspired weakening of the agency’s clandestine
operations, and the general devaluation of the spying
profession, has contributed to the decline in CIA
product.

But if we are to maintain a spy agency (and there
surely can’t be any doubt that we must), and if that spy
agency needs informants (and there is no question that it
does), we have to live with the unpleasant reality that
there will be far more sinners than saints in the ranks
of the informants. And we ought to remind ourselves that
those sinners will be operating in a very worthy cause.

Rep. Larry Combest, chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, has already announced hearings on
the matter. Hopefully, this time around, in this
particular House, there won’t be any confusion about just
who the real good guys are on the international scene.