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Official Cover-up Of El Salvador Massacre Hurts Credibility Of Government
by Anthony Lewis, The New York Times
November 24, 1992
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
The civil war in El Salvador is over now, a political settlement taking hold. But the American role in El Salvador did damage to our institutions and our honor that remains unrepaired. So we are reminded by a recent turn in an appalling piece of history.
On Jan. 27, 1982, correspondents of The New York Times and The Washington Post reported from the remote Salvadoran village of El Mozote that hundreds of civilians had been massacred there. Most were women, children and old men.
Raymond Bonner of The Times wrote that he had seen the skulls and bones of dozens of people buried under burned-out peasant houses. Alma Guillermopietro wrote a similar account for The Post.
Villagers nearby said an elite battalion of government forces had carried out the massacre the previous month. The villagers had a list of 733 victims. The Salvadoran Human Rights Commission put the number of dead at 926.
Those newspaper reports evoked angry denials and denunciations. A Salvadoran military spokesman said the account of a massacre had been fabricated by ``subversives.``
The Reagan administration, already embarrassed by Salvadoran death squads, was just as bristling. A week later Thomas Enders, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, told Congress: ``There is no evidence to confirm that (Salvadoran) government forces systematically massacred civilians ... or that the number of civilians killed even remotely approached the 733 or 926 victims cited in the press.``
Enders supposedly based his statement on an investigation by two U.S. Embassy officials in El Salvador. But he did not make their report public, and he misrepresented what they said.
The Reagan administration did not rest with disingenuous denials. It did its best to smear the reporters.
Sad to say, this effort at smearing found a voice in the press itself. The editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, ideologically committed to the Reagan administration and its view of what to do in El Salvador, ran an editorial 36 inches long headed ``The Media`s War.`` The correspondents who reported the El Mozote massacre had been ``overly credulous,`` the editorial suggested, and were taken in by a rebel ``propaganda exercise.``
``Much of the American media (in El Salvador), it would seem,`` The Journal said, ``was dominated by a style of reporting that grew out of Vietnam -- in which communist sources were given greater credence than either the U.S. government or the government it was supporting.``
The Journal editorial had a significant effect. Other newspapers worried about looking soft on communism and toned down their reporting from El Salvador.
The new turn in this story came last month, when a team of forensic archeologists digging in the ruins of El Mozote found dozens of skeletons. Most of them were of children. The archeologists said shell casings and other evidence supported the charge of a massacre by government troops.
The archeologists had to overcome strenuous resistance from the Salvadoran government to do their investigation. It was only insistence by a three-member Truth Commission set up under the peace agreement that opened the way. The Truth Commission has also had an extremely hard time getting cooperation from the U.S. government. Many U.S. documents on the El Mozote massacre are still being withheld from the commission -- and from us.
Surely the time has come for Americans, like Salvadorans, to know the truth of what was done in our name. Perhaps even Tom Enders and the other officials who covered up horrors could face the truth. And the press could learn again how essential it is to be skeptical of convenient official denials.
by Anthony Lewis, The New York Times
November 24, 1992
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
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The civil war in El Salvador is over now, a political settlement taking hold. But the American role in El Salvador did damage to our institutions and our honor that remains unrepaired. So we are reminded by a recent turn in an appalling piece of history.
On Jan. 27, 1982, correspondents of The New York Times and The Washington Post reported from the remote Salvadoran village of El Mozote that hundreds of civilians had been massacred there. Most were women, children and old men.
Raymond Bonner of The Times wrote that he had seen the skulls and bones of dozens of people buried under burned-out peasant houses. Alma Guillermopietro wrote a similar account for The Post.
Villagers nearby said an elite battalion of government forces had carried out the massacre the previous month. The villagers had a list of 733 victims. The Salvadoran Human Rights Commission put the number of dead at 926.
Those newspaper reports evoked angry denials and denunciations. A Salvadoran military spokesman said the account of a massacre had been fabricated by ``subversives.``
The Reagan administration, already embarrassed by Salvadoran death squads, was just as bristling. A week later Thomas Enders, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, told Congress: ``There is no evidence to confirm that (Salvadoran) government forces systematically massacred civilians ... or that the number of civilians killed even remotely approached the 733 or 926 victims cited in the press.``
Enders supposedly based his statement on an investigation by two U.S. Embassy officials in El Salvador. But he did not make their report public, and he misrepresented what they said.
The Reagan administration did not rest with disingenuous denials. It did its best to smear the reporters.
Sad to say, this effort at smearing found a voice in the press itself. The editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, ideologically committed to the Reagan administration and its view of what to do in El Salvador, ran an editorial 36 inches long headed ``The Media`s War.`` The correspondents who reported the El Mozote massacre had been ``overly credulous,`` the editorial suggested, and were taken in by a rebel ``propaganda exercise.``
``Much of the American media (in El Salvador), it would seem,`` The Journal said, ``was dominated by a style of reporting that grew out of Vietnam -- in which communist sources were given greater credence than either the U.S. government or the government it was supporting.``
The Journal editorial had a significant effect. Other newspapers worried about looking soft on communism and toned down their reporting from El Salvador.
The new turn in this story came last month, when a team of forensic archeologists digging in the ruins of El Mozote found dozens of skeletons. Most of them were of children. The archeologists said shell casings and other evidence supported the charge of a massacre by government troops.
The archeologists had to overcome strenuous resistance from the Salvadoran government to do their investigation. It was only insistence by a three-member Truth Commission set up under the peace agreement that opened the way. The Truth Commission has also had an extremely hard time getting cooperation from the U.S. government. Many U.S. documents on the El Mozote massacre are still being withheld from the commission -- and from us.
Surely the time has come for Americans, like Salvadorans, to know the truth of what was done in our name. Perhaps even Tom Enders and the other officials who covered up horrors could face the truth. And the press could learn again how essential it is to be skeptical of convenient official denials.