US Army School of the Americas ... perhaps one day history will get it right

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, May 11, 2003 By: Willy E. Gutman

Veteran journalist Willy E. Gutman writes: I was recently taken to task by an alleged journalist for my "dogged and virulent" attacks against the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) and for insisting that US "advisors" orchestrated the atrocities committed by its alumni in Latin America.

Opinions, the illegitimate offspring of proclivity and self-interest ... not fact alone ... predispose us to lean in one direction or another. Some of us, for example, are predisposed to glorify the SOA. Others, like me, who have documented its handiwork, witnessed the legacy it left behind and interviewed a number of its alumni, are predisposed to censure it. The truth, generally the stronger of two arguments, often rests on clever marketing and persuasive rhetoric aimed at an uninformed audience. Facts will bear me out.

Whether the US "ordered" the atrocities committed by a significant number of SOA graduates in Central and South America and in the Caribbean Basin, is irrelevant ... but I will return to this point further on. The indisputable fact remains ... and verifiable events confirm ... that SOA cadres were (a) trained by the US, (b) armed by the US, (c) funded by the CIA, (d) deployed in operations sanctioned by the US, and (e) coddled by regimes politically and economically subservient to the US

Co-founded by Argentinean strongman, General Leopoldo Galtieri, Honduran death squad Battalion 3-16, while staffed by Honduran officers, operated under direct US orders in "cleansing" forays approved by the Pentagon. I could cite a dozen other cases but, as a fellow journalist, my detractor should be familiar with the gory details.

I have interviewed ... and published the revelations of ... a number of Guatemalan and Honduran senior ranking officers implicated in well documented human rights abuses who affirmed that they had acted on orders of the US, sometimes under the supervision of US "advisors." These "advisors," I was told, did not take an active role in the various acts of barbarism perpetrated before their eyes; they merely "observed" the dastardly deeds from a safe distance.

One of these officers is a former Chief of Military Intelligence, now retired, and living on a fat US pension ... he and his cronies will never be called to answer for their crimes, he affirmed, "because the US has much to lose if we spill the beans."

Narco-trafficking schemes in which a number of SOA graduates were involved, have further helped tarnish the School's reputation. In Venezuela, General Ramon Davila Guillen, SOA class of 1967 (Irregular Warfare Operations) was indicted in November 1996 in connection with a shipment of one ton of cocaine into Miami in 1990, which he says was authorized by the CIA in an effort to catch drug dealers. In 1993, the CIA called the shipment "a regrettable incident" and dismissed the CIA agent involved. Several Colombian, Panamanian (among them Manuel Noriega), Honduran and Guatemalan SOA graduates were also implicated in narco-trafficking schemes as troops under their command were busy massacring their fellow countrymen.

I also interviewed two former SOA instructors whose sworn depositions confirm long-held suspicions that the SOA curriculum included training in "irregular warfare," with an emphasis on interrogation "techniques" (psychological and physical torture) as well as "pacification," a euphemism for brutal mass control of disenfranchised native populations.

Senators Joe Lieberman and Dodd, of Connecticut, with whom I have copious correspondence on the matter, expressed grave concern about the legitimacy and usefulness of the SOA, and about its abysmal human rights record.

Lastly, I had an opportunity to peruse an SOA Spanish-language manual adapted from a CIA handbook in which are prominently featured "persuasion methods" that clearly violate the Geneva Convention(s).

As a pragmatist, I am compelled to admit the value of military institutions and, on occasion the deplorable necessity for war. Years of extensive research into the SOA, however, suggest that there is nothing redeeming about that institution. After clamoring to have it shut down, I no longer advocate this course.

The SOA did "close," only to reopen the next day under a different and more sinister name ... The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

It will remain an arcane throwback of the Cold War and, like a chameleon, it will change its colors to suit its needs. It will never submit to accountability or transparency.

Perhaps one day history will get it right.

Willy E. Gutman WEGUTMAN@cs.com

Willy E. Gutman is a veteran journalist. He lives in southern California.