PART 2 OF 2
Paris 14 October 1972
Today my doubts about Sal and Leslie were resolved in the case of Leslie, completely, and in the case of Sal, almost. It began two days ago over pizza when Leslie gave me money for the trip to Brussels and London. When she asked how I like the typewriter she bought me, I told her I haven't used it because of the recordings -- adding that I left it at Therese's apartment. She seemed hurt that I had left it there, particularly as Therese never locks her apartment. Afterwards when Sal and I were alone, he said Leslie was very angry that I had left the typewriter with Therese, and, that if it disappears (Therese has already had several intrusions), Leslie will stop financing me.
Without reflecting properly I took the typewriter from Therese's apartment to Catherine's studio, although as usual I went through my counter-surveillance routine. I placed it under the table where I work and this afternoon after finishing the last tape I went out to buy a bottle of beer. When I returned I noticed a man and woman standing in front of Catherine's door, looking as if they had just knocked. As I approached the door, however, they backed away and began to embrace. I knocked and Catherine opened, laughing as she noticed the embrace in the dark hallway.
On glancing back at the couple with their full coats and large travel bags, I suddenly realized what was happening. After closing the door I took Catherine aside and whispered that the man and woman were probably monitors of a bugging operation to discover where I am living. She said she saw a hearing-aid in the ear of the man, which suggested that the irritating beeps causing interference on my radio over the past two days were the signal being monitored.
Catherine followed the couple down the steps to see where they went, and in their confusion they went all the way to the ground floor where the doorway is always locked with a key. This building, only a block from the Seine, has its regular entrance on the side away from the river and up the slope -- corresponding to the third or fourth floor up from the ground floor where the monitors went. As they had no key they stood around for a moment, embraced again as Catherine passed, said nothing, and began to walk back up the stairs. Catherine, who had been watching them from the garbage-room, came back to the studio and told me that they seemed to have portable radios or cases beneath their coats.
Now it was clear. Since bringing the typewriter that Leslie bought for me to Catherine's studio, I have been hearing a beeping sound on my own portable FM radio. I paid little attention, however, because of the nearness to ORTF and the frequent other interference I get. I reached under the table, raised the typewriter case with the machine inside, and began to turn it. As I turned it the beeping sound on my radio got louder and softer in direct relation to the turning. Catherine carried it out of the building and the beeping completely disappeared. When she returned it began again. Later I tore open the lining of the inside roof of the case and found an elaborate installation of transistors, batteries, circuits, wiring and antennas -- also a tiny microphone for picking up voices. The objects were all very small, mounted in spaces cut out of a piece of 1/4-inch plywood cut exactly the size of the case and glued against the roof. Not only was the object designed to discover where I live through direction-finding, it appears also made for transmitting conversations.
I shall leave for Brussels in three days and Catherine will go to the country for a few days -- there is certainly nothing they can do to her. Before leaving I shall stay in cheap hotels in Montmartre, changing each morning so that the police cannot find me through their registry slips. From London I will write to Sal and Leslie telling them that I prefer to work alone from now on -- I can find some source of support for the two or three months until I finish, Leslie is a spy, and I will know for certain about Sal when I ask him where he got the first typewriter he lent me. Obviously that first machine was lent as a stand-in until the bugged typewriter was ready and they could effect a sudden switch. Leslie's feigned resentment when I left the typewriter at Therese's apartment was the ploy to get me to take the typewriter to where I live.
The damage may have been slight, but I've been foolish. From now on I take no chances.
London 24 October 1972
Today, Tuesday, I arrived in London on the train from Paris. In order to avoid carrying the manuscript and other materials to Brussels -- where the CIA might have tried to talk to me in my father's presence -- I went back to Paris to get them a d to proceed here. At the Gare du Nord this morning a friend was waiting to tell me that on Friday Therese was arrested and taken to an interrogation centre at the Ministry of the Interior. For several hours she was questioned about me and the book -- they know of my CIA background and said the U.S. government considers me an enemy of the state. They were most interested in discovering where I lived in Paris, but as Therese didn't know she couldn't tell them. Apparently she played dumb and was finally released. Tomorrow I will call to reassure her and to see if there are more details.
What is interesting about the arrest is that the French have continued to help the CIA- the surveillance and the crude opening of my correspondence sent c/o Sal were probably done by the French. However, by Friday -- the day Therese was arrested -- the CIA had known for a week where I was living. If the French service didn't know, it was only because the station hadn't told them -- probably in order to avoid admitting that I caught the monitors and discovered the installation in the typewriter case. After having helped the Paris station, the French service might not like being kept on chasing around for my hideaway for days after it was known to the CIA.
Tonight by telephone Sal also told me of Therese's arrest, adding that Leslie 'panicked' and went to Spain on Saturday. I feigned concern that she hadn't come here as planned, but Sal said he too was going to Spain -- tomorrow if he can -- in order to let things 'cool off'. I don't want them to know for sure that I am breaking with them, not yet anyway, so I protested to Sal that he must come here to help as planned. He insisted try at he go to Spain in order to convince Leslie to come to London, and he will call by telephone later this week after seeing her.
The British service was well prepared for my arrival. My name was on the immigration check-list on the ship crossing the Channel, which caused me a long interview and then a longer wait. I can take no chances on jeopardizing my status here. Tomorrow I must begin looking for support, as I have money for only a few days.
London 7 December 1972
Relief at last. After calling at the International Commission for Peace and Disarmament, a group that channels protest against U.S. crimes in Vietnam, I was sent to several other possible sources of support, finally to the editor who will help me finish. I now have a contract to publish here, with an advance sufficient to carry me through to the end as well as transcription service and other important support.
At the British Museum, moreover, I began reading the newspapers and discovered that here is the pot of gold I've been chasing for the past three years. In less than one week I discovered so many events in which we participated that I have decided to read all the newspapers, day by day, from the time I went to Ecuador until I returned to Washington from Uruguay. The Mexico City papers will also be valuable for selected events there. The editor accepts the added delay -- this places completion from a few months to a year or more away -- but it will be worth the effort. Sometimes I feel that I am reading the CIA files themselves, so much of what the Agency does is reflected in actual events. I may, in fact, be able to piece together a diary presentation to make the operations more readable.
I tried at first to live under an assumed name, more or less secretly as I had done in Paris. But each night as I left the Museum I was trailed by surveillance teams, and fatigue led me to give up the effort to conceal where I was living. My mail is again being opened, quite obviously, and meetings arranged by telephone have generated immediate surveillance once more. At times I wonder if the surveillance is mainly for harassment, as it is so clumsy and indiscreet, but if the British service does nothing more serious, I shall be able to finish in calm.
In telephone conversations with Sal and Leslie in Spain, she again tried to convince me to go there but she also refused to send me money. Sal eventually came to London to continue helping me -- not knowing, perhaps, that I've solved the problem of support -- but at our first meeting I refused his help unless he gave me certain information. Making it clear I thought Leslie was a spy, but without revealing how I found out, I asked Sal a series of questions on his university background and his connections with the underground press in the U.S. Eventually we came around to the first typewriter he lent me, and when he continued refusing to reveal who gave it to him (just as he had refused earlier in July) I told him we could go no further. I can only conclude that the CIA failed to establish a proper cover story for the first typewriter, since Sal could neither explain where it came from nor why he refused to explain. There is a remote possibility that Sal is the victim of an amazing chain of coincidences, but I can have nothing more to do with him.
In spite of the recent good news there is also a gloomy side. As soon as I had oral agreement on the new contract I telephoned the boys to tell them I have the money for them to come at Christmas. To my dismay Janet said she would not let them come, insisting that I go there to see them. She knows perfectly well that I cannot risk a trip to the U.S. until I have finished the book, so she must be cooperating with the CIA to ensure that in my desperation to see my sons I will risk a trip back now. It won't work.
London October 1973
I hurry to finish, now more confident than ever that I really will see this project to the end. The coup in Chile, terrible as it is, has been like a spur for even faster work. Signs of preparations for the coup were clear all along. While economic assistance to Chile plummeted after Allende's election, military aid continued: in 1972 military aid to the Chilean generals and admirals was the highest to any country in Latin America; the growth of the CIA station since 1970 under the Chief of Station, Ray Warren; ‡ the murder of General Schneider; the militancy of well-heeled 'patriotic' organizations such as Patria y Libertad; the economic sabotage; the truckers' strike of 1972 with the famous 'dollar-per- day' to keep the strikers from working; and the truckers' strike of this past June -- both strikes probably were financed by the CIA, perhaps through the International Transport Workers' Federation ‡ (ITF), perhaps through the AIFLD which had already trained some 9000 Chilean workers. Perhaps through Brazil. So many possible ways. Finally the Plan Z: so like our Flores document in Quito, our evidence against the Soviets in Montevideo, so typical of CIA black documents. Was it placed in the Minister's office by an agent in the Ministry? More likely the Chilean generals simply asked the station to write Plan Z, just as our Uruguayan liaison collaborators asked us to write the scenario for proof of Soviet intervention with trade unions in 1965 and 1966.
Brazilian participation in preparations for the coup and follow-up repression clearly demonstrates Brazil's subordinate but key role in the U.S. government's determination to retain capitalist hegemony in Latin America. Brazilian exiles arrested in Chile are recognizing their former torturers from Brazilian jails, as now they are again forced to submit to such horror. What we see in Chile today is still another flowering of Brazilian fascism.
Only a few more months and ten years will have passed since that 31 March when the cables arrived in the Montevideo station reporting Goulart's overthrow. Such joy and relief! Such a regime we created. Not just through the CIA organization and training of the military regime's intelligence services; not just through the military assistance programmes -- good for 165 million dollars in grants, credit sales and surplus equipment since 1964 plus special training in the U.S. for thousands; not just through the AID police-assistance programme worth over 8 million dollars and training for more than 100,000 Brazilian policemen; not just the rest of the U.S. economic assistance programme -- worth over 300 million dollars in 1972 alone and over 4 billion dollars in the last twenty-five years. Not just the multi-lateral economic assistance programmes where U.S. influence is strong -- worth over 2.5 billion dollars since 1946 and over 700 million dollars in 1972. Most important, every one of the hundreds of millions of private U.S. dollars invested in Brazil is a dollar in support of fascism.
All this to support a regime in which the destitute, marginalized half of the population -- some fifty million people -- are getting still poorer while the small ruling elite and their military puppets get an ever larger share. All this to support a regime under which the income of the high 5 per cent of the income scale now gets almost 40 per cent of total income, while half the population has to struggle for survival on 15 per cent of total income. All this to create a facade of 'economic miracle' where per capita income is still only about 450 dollars per year -- still behind Nicaragua, Peru and nine other Latin American countries -- and where even the UN Economic Commission for Latin America reports that the 'economic miracle' has been of no benefit to the vast majority of the population. All this for a regime that has to clamour for export markets because creation of an internal market would imply reforms such as redistribution of income and a slackening of repression -- possibly even a weakening of the dictatorship. All this to support a regime denounced the world over for the barbaric torture and inhuman treatment inflicted as a matter of routine on its thousands of political prisoners -- including priests, nuns and many non-Marxists -- many of whom fail to survive the brutality or are murdered outright. Repression in Brazil even includes cases of the torture of children, before their parents' eyes, in order to force the parents to give information. This is what the CIA, police assistance, military training and economic aid programmes have brought to the Brazilian people. And the Brazilian regime is spreading it around: Bolivia in 1971, Uruguay in February of this year and now Chile.
Ecuador, too, has seen some remarkable events since I left. The reform programme begun by the military junta in 1963 eventually led to the junta's own overthrow in 1966 the early relief of the ruling class because of the junta's repression of the left gave way to alarm over economic reforms and finally a combined opposition from left and right, similar to the forces that led to Velasco's overthrow in 1961. After a few months' provisional government, a Constituent Assembly convened to form a government and to write a new Constitution -- Ecuador's seventeenth -- which was promulgated in 1967. The 1968 election provided in the new Constitution developed into a new struggle between Camilo Ponce, on the right, and yes, Velasco, on the ... well, wherever he happened to be. Velasco was elected President for the fifth time, but largely because he was supported by Carlos Julio Arosemena who had managed to recoup a considerable political following after his overthrow.
Velasco's fifth presidency began with the familiar spate of firings of government employees to make way for his own supporters, followed in 1970 by his closure of the Congress and assumption of dictatorial powers. Ecuador's seventeenth Constitution had a short life, although Velasco promised that elections would occur on schedule in 1972. Trouble was that Asaad Bucaram, the presidential candidate everyone knew would win, is too honest and too well known to favour the common people. (Carlos Arizaga Vega ‡ [i] was the leading Conservative Party candidate.) After Velasco failed to force Bucaram to stay in exile, or to prove through an elaborate campaign that Bucaram was not really born in Ecuador (both campaigns only strengthened Bucaram) all the traditional parties and economic elites -- and eighty-year-old Velasco himself -- combined to promote chaos and military intervention once again. In February 1972, a few months before the elections, the Ecuadorean military leaders took over and Velasco was overthrown for the fourth time in his five presidencies. During the years since I left there have been no meaningful reforms to ease the extreme injustices that prevailed when I first arrived in 1960.
Ecuador, however, after all these generations of political tragicomedy and popular suffering has suddenly become the centre of very great international attention. Petroleum! Ecuador this year became a major oil exporter, thanks to discoveries in the Amazonian jungles east of the Andes. Not that these discoveries were really so recent. It is now known that the oil was discovered by the cartel in explorations beginning in 1920, but was kept secret to avoid oversupply on the world market. By 1949 the petroleum companies had been so successful in keeping the fabulous reserves secret that Gala Plaza, then Ecuadorean President, diverted national attention from the eastern region by describing traditional hopes for oil or other resources in the oriente as one great myth. At the same time, under Plaza's leadership, Ecuador became the banana republic that it is -- not surprising since Plaza had worked for United Fruit which, with Standard Fruit, became the dominant power for production and marketing of Ecuadorean bananas. Meanwhile the oil companies made millions by importing petroleum.
In March 1964, just after I left Ecuador, the military junta contracted for new exploration with the Texaco-Gulf consortium and subsequent contracts under other governments followed. But discoveries in the late 1960s could not be kept secret as in the past, and soon Ecuadorean reserves were being described as equal to or greater than those of Venezuela. By 1971 all the oriente region and all the coastal and offshore areas had been contracted for exploration and exploitation -- in almost all cases with terms exceedingly prejudicial to Ecuador but with undoubted benefits to the government officials involved. All seven of the big companies got contracts, as did a number of smaller companies, and even Japanese concerns. By mid-1972 the pipeline from the oriente basin over the Andes and down to the Pacific port of Esmeraldas was completed, and oil started to flow -- just a few months after the latest military takeover from Velasco. This year Ecuadorean income from oil exports is approaching the value of all the country's exports in 1972 when. they were still dominated by bananas, coffee and cacao. Prospects for increased production and income (800,000 to 1,000,000 barrels daily) are almost beyond imagination.
First indications from the new military government created hope that a leftist nationalism of the Peruvian brand might channel benefits from petroleum exports to the masses of poor most in need of help. There was even talk of land reform and social justice and equal opportunity -- familiar themes. Soon, however, a Brazilian-lining faction within the military leadership began to grow and struggles continue between these reactionary forces and the progressives who favour the Peruvian model. Nevertheless quite significant steps were taken to recover control of the petroleum industry and to reverse the shameful sell-outs made by the military junta in 1964 and by succeeding governments.
Several former government officials were even tried for their participation in the vast corruption connected with petroleum contracts between 1964 and 1972.
But so far the reactionary forces in the Ecuadorean government have been able to avoid agrarian reform, while military institutions take half of all the petroleum income -- the other half being invested in electrification. Benefits from petroleum so far are best described by AID: 'Initially, the beneficial effects of oil are being felt mainly in the more prosperous sectors of Ecuadorean society, while the poor half of the population remains virtually isolated from the economic mainstream. The rural and urban poor, with an average annual per capita income of less than eighty dollars, provide an inadequate market to stimulate the growth of the modern sector.'
From a distance one can only imagine the struggle now under way between left and right within the context of Ecuadorean nationalism. Some of the forces involved, however, are evident. Brazilian support to reactionaries is part of larger efforts to get into active exploitation of Ecuador's petroleum -- not surprising as Brazil must import 80 per cent of its oil. On the U.S. side, while military aid was suspended because of the tuna war, the Public Safety programme goes on -- worth about four million dollars in organization, training and equipment. The 1972 Public Safety project for Ecuador describes the programme's purpose: 'To assist the Government of Ecuador to develop and maintain an atmosphere conducive to increasing domestic and foreign investment, and the law and order necessary for a stable democratic society, by working through the National Police.' The logic seems odd: the military government has declared its intention to remain in power indefinitely. The National Police enforces military rule. Therefore, strengthening the National Police will lead to a 'stable, democratic society'.
The CIA station also continues -- now larger than ever with at least seven operations officers under Embassy cover in Quito (Paul Harwood; is now Chief of Station) and four operations officers in the Guayaquil Consulate (Keith Schofield ‡ is Chief of Base). By this year the AIFLD has trained almost 20,000 Ecuadorean workers while CEOSL; continues to make inroads against CTE dominance in the trade-union movement. In 1971 CEOSL and the International Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers; established the National Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers ‡ with none other than Matias Ulloa Coppiano [ii] as one of the main organizers. No question about the importance of Ecuador's petroleum workers now.
Perhaps in months to come the military government using petroleum income, will commit itself to fairer distribution of income, and to programmes that will benefit the mass of the population. The reforms -- agrarian, economic and administrative -- remain to be realized. Without doubt the chance that progressive forces will prevail underlies the policy of the Communist Party of Ecuador to support the current military government. Perhaps the government will fall under complete domination of its Brazilian-line faction. Perhaps it will continue without clear definition beyond continued favouring of the already wealthy class -- allowing the petroleum bonanza to trigger extreme inflation and distorted economic development, as in Venezuela. But if it is to take a progressive path it will have to overcome not only the pro-Brazilians within its ranks, but also the U.S. government programmes, not the least of which are put out by the CIA, including AIFLD, CEOSL and other reactionary organizations. In any case, events since I left demonstrate increasingly the triumph of those revolutionary ideas we fought so hard to destroy. Today Ecuador is immensely closer to the inevitable revolutionary structural changes than when I arrived.
Events in Uruguay since 1966 have been no less interesting than in Ecuador and considerably more revealing of the Brazilian military regime's readiness to fulfil the role of sub-imperialist power in South America -- remaining within and supporting continued U.S. hegemony.
In March 1967, Uruguay returned to the one-man executive as approved in the November 1966 elections. Nine months later, however, the moderate Colorado President died and was replaced by the rightist Vice-President, Jorge Pacheco Areco. Pacheco's four years in office were marked by continuing inflation, continuing financial and governmental corruption, no reforms, and failure to repress the Tupamaro movement in spite of widening use of torture, right-wing civilian terror organizations (of the type financed by the Montevideo station in the early 1960s), and police death-squads on the well known Brazilian model. The full flowering of the Tupamaro movement during the Pacheco presidency brought long periods of state of siege and suppression of constitutional liberties but with little success. Brazilian official policy of strengthening conservative influence in Uruguay -- begun in 1964 by Manuel Pio Correa -- resulted in the formation during the Pacheco presidency of Brazilian-line factions, both in military institutions and in the traditional political parties.
In the November 1971 elections Pacheco was defeated in his attempt at re-election through constitutional amendment, but the winner was Juan Mana Bordaberry, Pacheco's next choice after himself. There was wide belief that the chief Blanco contender had actually won the close election, but through fraud the presidency was given to Bordaberry -- an admitted advocate of 'Brazilian-style solutions' and a prominent landowner. (In the early 1960s Bordaberry had been a leader of the Federal League for Ruralist Action dominated by Benito Nardone. He resigned his Senate seat in 1965 and in 1971 was running as a Colorado.)
Results of the 1971 elections indicate the remarkable growth of leftist sentiment in recent years. In 1958 the electoral front of the Communist Party of Uruguay received 2.6 per cent (27,000) of the total vote, in 1962 3.5 per cent (41,000), in 1966 5.7 per cent (70,000), and in 1971 -- strengthened with other groups in the Frente Amplio -- 18.4 per cent (304,000). CIA estimates of PC U membership (published by the Department of State in World Strength of Communist Organizations) also grew correspondingly from 3000 in 1962 to 6000 in 1964 to 20,000 in 1969. With all this and the Tupamaros, too, something had to be done.
On taking office in March 1972 Bordaberry reportedly intensified the use of torture on Tupamaro prisoners which, in combination with errors by the Tupamaros themselves, led to severe setbacks for the movement. By September 1972 the Tupamaros were forced into a period of reorganization. Successes against the Tupamaros, however, created greater consciousness within the Uruguayan military of the injustices and corruption against which the Tupamaros had been fighting. Interrogations of Tupamaros led the military to uncover more stunning corruption than ever, and the trail began to lead back through the Pacheco regime to Pacheco himself and to Bordaberry who had been one of Pacheco's ministers. Investigations led to the arrest of some eighty business leaders in late 1972, and to an increasing tendency for military intervention in the civilian government.
In February 1973 the military finally took over but kept Bordaberry in office as chief executive, establishing a National Security Council as the mechanism for controlling the government.
The Uruguayan military justified their intervention as necessary for rooting out corruption and effecting agrarian, tax and credit reforms. Combating Marxism-Leninism was another justification offered by the military -- which was itself divided among those under Brazilian influence, those favouring a leftist nationalism of the Peruvian variety, and those favouring closer relations with Argentina to preserve independence from Brazil. In June the Congress was closed and Brazilian-line military leaders were clearly in control.
With the ascendancy of Brazilian influence in Uruguay during the Pacheco and Bordaberry military governments, repression of the entire left has reached previously unimaginable proportions. Leftist parties have been proscribed, the National Workers' Convention outlawed, prisons overflow with political prisoners, freedom of the press has been eliminated, and left-wingers have been rooted out of the entire educational system. For having covered the Chilean coup three newspapers and one radio station were closed. The University of the Republic has been closed and the Rector and deans of all the faculties are facing military courts. Torture of political prisoners, already widespread under Pacheco, now seems to be equaling Brazilian proportions.
Meanwhile, since I left Uruguay in 1966, the economic crisis has deepened even more. Per capita economic growth during 1960- 71 was zero. Inflation, according to the government's own figures, was 47 per cent in 1971, 96 per cent in 1972, and will reach 100 per cent this year -- for 1962-72 inflation was near 6500 per cent. The peso, in the 70s when I left, is now down to 750 officially, and to over 900 on the black market. Purchasing power of the ordinary Uruguayan has declined 60-80 per cent in the past six years. Little wonder that latest polls indicate that 40 per cent of the population would emigrate if they could. In March this year it was revealed that Bordaberry had secretly sold 20 per cent of the country's gold reserves in order to pay foreign creditors, and he continues to pursue his admitted economic goal of integration with the Brazilian economy.
Assistance by the U.S. government to the Pacheco and the Bordaberry/military regime has of course not been lacking. Military aid to Uruguay during 1967-71 (grants, surplus equipment and credit sales) totalled 10.3 million dollars and for the financial year 1972 was just over 4 million dollars -- equivalent to almost one and a half dollars for each Uruguayan. Training of the Uruguayan military also continues with a total of over 2000 trained since 1950. Economic assistance to Uruguay through AID and other official U.S. agencies rose from 6.5 million in 1971 to 10 million dollars last year. The Public Safety programme also continues -- worth 225,000 dollars last year with a cumulative total, since it was started by Ned Holman; in 1964, of 2.5 million dollars. About 120 Uruguayan policemen have been trained in the U.S., and over 700 in Uruguay, in riot control, communications and 'investigative procedures'.
CIA support? Montevideo station officers under Embassy cover grew from six to eight between 1966 and 1973, not to mention increases under non-official cover or within the A I D Public Safety mission. Significantly, the Chief of Station since early this year, Gardner Hathaway, served in the Rio de Janeiro station during 1962-5 when the Goulart government was brought down and the military regime was cemented in power. Similarly, the Deputy Chief of Station, Fisher Ames, ‡ served in the Dominican Republic during the repression following U.S. military invasion. Prominent among leaders of the Bordaberry /military government is Juan Jose Gari, ‡ [iii] the old Ruralista political-action agent who is one of Bordaberry's chief advisors and, with Bordaberry, one of the leading opponents of the reforms mentioned but not yet started by military leaders. Important too is Mario Aguerrondo, ‡ [iv] close liaison collaborator of the station when he was Montevideo Chief of Police in 1958-62. He's now a retired Army general and was a leader of the military coup in February.
Progress can also be noted in station labour operations. Since starting the AIFLD operation in Uruguay in 1963, over 7500 workers have been trained. This programme enabled the station to form a new national trade-union confederation, finally replacing the old Uruguayan Labor Confederation (CSU) that was scrapped in 1967. The new organization, called the Uruguayan Confederation of Workers ‡ (CUT), was formed in 1970and is safely inside the fold of ORIT, ICFTU and the ITS. The pattern for formation of the CUT is almost a carbon copy of the formation of the CEOSL in Ecuador.
For the time being power lies with the Brazilian-line reactionary elements in the Uruguayan military. As in Ecuador the chance exists that those military officers who prefer a nationalist and progressive solution will eventually triumph, so that some of the reforms so drastically needed can be imposed. But as in Chile and in Brazil itself, this terrible repression only raises the people's consciousness of the injustices and can only speed the day for revolutionary structural transformation.
Events in Mexico have been less spectacular than in Ecuador and Uruguay -- the one-party dictatorship of necessity lacks the violent lurches of political free-for-all and military coup -- but no less indicative of rising revolutionary consciousness. While the country's remarkable per capita income growth (an average 3.2 per cent increase annually during 1960-71) reached just under 800 dollars last year, the benefits continue to be enjoyed by very few. The poorer half of the population gets only about 15 per cent of the total income and according to the Bank, of Mexico half of the economically active population lack job security and earn under 80 dollars per month. A study by the National University revealed that of Mexico's twenty-four million people of working age, 9.6 million (40 per cent) are unemployed. As in the case of Brazil, Mexico's lack of an internal market because of income concentration in the privileged minority has forced the country to scramble for export markets in order to continue its economic growth and to meet payments on its enormous foreign debt contracted for development projects.
Surprise and alarm spread through Mexico's wealthy elite when Luis Echeverria [v] campaigned for the presidency in 1970 on a programme for redistribution of income, so that workers and peasants would receive a fairer share. His intensive campaign throughout the country seemed designed for a candidate fighting an uphill battle against an overwhelming opposition -- not altogether misleading since the opposition was the people's apathy rather than another candidate. His reformist policies were strongly opposed by Mexican business and industrial interests, and his new attempt to introduce democratic procedures within the P R I intensified divisions within the party. Although new statutes providing for greater internal democracy were adopted at the PRI convention in 1972, Echeverria has had scant success in trying to get a redistribution of income. Fears within the privileged minority that reforms might dangerously weaken the whole PRI power structure, together with resistance to the economic effect of redistribution, have effectively prevented significant reforms from starting.
Faced with the prospect of continuing injustice and failure of reform, Mexicans are increasingly turning to revolutionary action -- and as revolutionary consciousness and action has grown, so too has the level of repression. The guerrilla movement in the Guerrero mountains continues to operate successfully against the discredited Mexican Army, in spite of the death of its principal leader, Genaro Rojas. Bank expropriations, executions, kidnappings and other direct action grow in intensity as urban guerrilla movements appear in the main Mexican cities.
The student movement, too, gains new strength in spite of regular right-wing violence. Just two months after I left Mexico another Tlatelolco-style massacre occurred when a peaceful student march of 8000 was attacked by some 500 plain-clothes para-police armed with machine-guns, pistols, chains, clubs and other weapons. The number killed was kept secret. Regular police forces were prevented from intervening even afterwards when the thugs invaded hospitals to prevent treatment to the injured students -- roughing up doctors and breaking into operating rooms. Reaction to this carefully planned and officially sponsored attack caused the resignations of the Mexico City police chief and mayor, but Echeverria's promised investigation was predictably unsuccessful in finding those responsible.
One year later, in June 1972, dozens of students were injured when police attacked a demonstration commemorating companions killed at the Corpus Christi massacre. Since then repression of the student movement has been attempted alternately by the regular police forces and by the government-sponsored rightwing terror squads, with killings of students in August 1972 and February, May and August of this year. Two months ago the new right-wing rector of the National University in Mexico City called in the police to take over the campus, in order to enforce his programme to 'de-politicize' the University. Continuing student demands for justice have brought clashes in other university cities.
Meanwhile U.S. official support to the Mexican government and military continues. The C IA station in Mexico City remains the largest in Latin America. Strange that Jim Noland lasted only one year as Chief of Station and that John Horton lasted only two -- replaced by Richard Sampson ‡ (who in 1968 replaced Horton in Montevideo and who was transferred back to Washington not long after the Mitrione execution). Perhaps Echeverria has refused to have any contact with the station. ORIT ‡ continues with its headquarters in Mexico City and with the Inter-American Labor College in Cuernavaca. Programmes in Mexico of the AIFLD also continue, and one can assume the station's support to Mexican security services is as strong as ever.
The gap between rich and poor grows in developed countries as well as in poor countries and between the developed and underdeveloped countries. A considerable proportion of the developed world's prosperity rests on paying the lowest possible prices for the poor countries' primary products and on exporting high-cost capital and finished goods to those countries. Continuation of this kind of prosperity requires continuation of the relative gap between developed and underdeveloped countries -- it means keeping poor people poor. Within the underdeveloped countries the distorted, irrational growth dependent on the demands and vagaries of foreign markets precludes national integration, with increasing marginalization of the masses. Even the increasing nationalism of countries like Peru, Venezuela and Mexico only yield ambiguous programmes for liberating dependent economies while allowing privileged minorities to persist.
Increasingly, the impoverished masses are understanding that the prosperity of the developed countries and of the privileged minorities in their own countries is founded on their poverty. This understanding is bringing even greater determination to take revolutionary, action and to renew the revolutionary movements where, as in Chile, reverses have occurred. Increasingly, the underprivileged and oppressed minorities in developed countries, particularly the U.S., perceive the identity of their own struggle with that of the marginalized masses in poor countries.
The U.S. government's defeat in Vietnam and in Cuba inspires exploited peoples everywhere to take action for their liberation. Not the CIA, police training, military assistance, 'democratic' trade unions, not even outright military intervention can forever postpone the revolutionary structural changes that mean the end of capitalist imperialism and the building of socialist society. Perhaps this is the reason why policymakers in the U.S. and their puppets in Latin America are unable to launch reform programmes. They realize that reform might lead even faster to revolutionary awareness and action and their only alternative is escalating repression and increasing injustice. Their time, however. is running out.
London January 1974
Six months to finish the research and six months to write this diary. If it is successful I shall be able to support other current and former CIA employees who want to describe their experiences and to open more windows on this activity. There must be many other CIA diaries to be written, and I pledge my support and experience to make them possible. Had I found the advice and support I needed at the beginning, I might have finished in two years rather than four, and many problems might have been avoided.
The CIA is still hoping to make me go back to the U.S. before publishing the diary, and I now find that my desperation to see the children was indeed what they thought might lure me back. Janet now admits that the Agency has been asking her for a long time not to send the children so that I would have to go there to see them. Although she refused to cooperate and sent them here last summer, she again refused to send them for the Christmas vacation while suggesting that I go there. Perhaps only when the children are no longer children will my seeing them become unravelled from the CIA.
For those who were unaware of the U.S. government's secret tools of foreign policy, perhaps this diary will help answer some of the questions on American domestic political motivations and practices that have arisen since the first Watergate arrests. In the CIA we justified our penetration, disruption and sabotage of the left in Latin America -- around the world for that matter - because we felt morality changed on crossing national frontiers. Little would we have considered applying these methods inside our own country. Now, however, we see that the FBI was employing these methods against the left in the U.S. in a planned, coordinated programme to disrupt, sabotage and repress the political organizations to the left of Democratic and Republican liberals. The murders at Kent and Jackson State, domestic activities of U.S. military intelligence, and now the President's own intelligence plan and 'plumbers' unit -- ample demonstration that CIA methods were really brought home. Prior restraints on using these methods against the 'respectable' opposition were bound to crumble. In the early 1960s when the CIA moved to its new headquarters in Virginia, Watergate methods obtained final institutional status.
How fitting that over the rubble of the CIA's old temporary buildings back in Washington, the new building that rose was called 'Watergate'.
When the Watergate trials end and the whole episode begins to fade, there will be a movement for national renewal, for reform of electoral practices, and perhaps even for reform of the FBI and the CIA. But the return to our cozy self-righteous traditions should lure no one into believing that the problem has been removed. Reforms attack symptoms rather than the disease, and 110 other proof is needed than the Vietnam War and Watergate to demonstrate that the disease is our economic system and its motivational patterns.
Reforms of the FBI and the CIA, even removal of the President from office, cannot remove the problem. American capitalism, based as it is on exploitation of the poor, with its fundamental motivation in personal greed, simply cannot survive without force -- without a secret police force. The argument is with capitalism and it is capitalism that must be opposed, with its CIA, FBI and other security agencies understood as logical, necessary manifestations of a ruling class's determination to retain power and privilege.
Now, more than ever, indifference to injustice at home and abroad is impossible. Now, more clearly than ever, the extremes of poverty and wealth demonstrate the irreconcilable class conflicts that only socialist revolution can resolve. Now, more than ever, each of us is forced to make a conscious choice whether to support the system of minority comfort and privilege with all its security apparatus and repression, or whether to struggle for real equality of opportunity and fair distribution of benefits for all of society, in the domestic as well as the international order. It's harder now not to realize that there are two sides, harder not to understand each, and harder not to recognize that like it or not we contribute day in and day out either to the one side or to the other.
London May 1975
After a year of increasing doubt whether this diary would ever be published in the U.S. the way now looks clear. Had not Rep. Michael Harrington and Seymour Hersh and others made startling revelations in the year past, the political climate might not have permitted publication in the U.S. even now. Not that the CIA hasn't tried to delay and suppress this work: spurious leaks to discredit me, threats to enjoin publication, hints of expensive litigations. Yet in the end it is the CIA that gives way as its very institutional survival is brought into question. We already know enough of what the CIA does to resolve to oppose it. The CIA is one of the great forces promoting political repression in countries with minority regimes that serve a privileged and powerful elite. One way to neutralize the CIA's support to repression is to expose its officers so that their presence in foreign countries becomes untenable. Already significant revelations have begun and I will continue to assist those who are interested in identifying and exposing the CIA people in their countries.
Probably at no time since World War II have the American people had such an opportunity as now to examine how and why succeeding U.S. administrations have chosen, as in Vietnam, to back minority, oppressive and doomed regimes. The Congressional investigating committees can, if they want, illuminate a whole dark world of foreign Watergates covering the past thirty years, and these can be related to the dynamics within our society from which they emerged. The key question is to pass beyond the facts of CIA's operations to the reasons they were established -- which inexorably will lead to economic questions: preservation of property relations and other institutions on which rest the interests of our own wealthy and privileged minority. This, not the CIA, is the critical issue.
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Notes:
1. Analysis of the Economic and Social Evolution of Latin America Since the Beginnings of the Alliance for Progress, Washington, 3 August, 1971.
i. The author has no knowledge that this person is in any way connected with the Agency at present.
ii. The author has no knowledge that this person is in any way connected with the Agency at present.
iv. The author has no knowledge that this person is in any way connected with the Agency at present.
v. The author has no knowledge that this person is in any way connected with the Agency at present.