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780 The Nation. June 5,1995who would probably go undetected” by the Clinton bill.Paramilitaries are most to be feared not when they hate thegovernment but when they are its allies, as when the Ku KluxKlan dominated Democratic politics in the South from theera of lynch law to the early 1960s. That’s why the overt allianceof militias with conservative Republicans via the wellfundedWise Use movement or the N.R.A., and with electedRepublican legislators like Helen Chenoweth is real cause forconcern. But that’s politics, not law enforcement. Using merehatred of the government to justify wiretaps, unregulatedF.B.I. power to subpoena credit and bank records and the creationof a huge federal snoop squad is cynical manipulation ofpublic fear. As Senator Feingold observes, “Every bureaucracyhas its wish list, and what better chance to get it through?”The Country TeamTstation chiefs who have directed the U.S. and Guatemalanagents working inside the GuatemalanArmy’s notorious (3-2. If Congress is serious abouthe Natmn has learned the identities of the C.I.A.investigating the U.S. role in Guatemala’s holocaust, itshould call these men to testify-publicly-along with vanoushlgher-ups.V. Harwood “Vinx” Blocker 3d (who served from 1977 to1980) can speak on the early years of the Gen. Lucas Garciaregime, when the Guatemalan Army, with U.S. backing andsupport, staged a series of high-noon assassmations that decapltatedthe popular movement. His interim successor, Barry. . Royden (1980), can also speak to that theme, as can RobertHultslander (1981-83), who arrived at the height of the urbanterror and who ran the station as the Guatemalan Army ravagedthe Mayan countryside. Vincent M. Shields (1983-84)and Jack McCavitt (1984-86) can testify to the General Mejiayears, when the army perfected its web of clandestine torturecenters and persecuted the relatives of the disappeared. RafaelMariani (1987-88) can discuss the crimes of Gen. Hector GramajoMorales, a C.I.A. asset (Mariani told me that Gramajohad “an excellent reputation”), as can Alfonso Sapia-Bosch(1988-91), who ran the station during the assassination of anthropologistMyrna Mack, the gang-rape and torture Sis- ofter Dianna Ortiz, the massacre at Santiago Atitlan and theexecution of innkeeper Michael DeVine. Frederic Brugger(1991-93) and Dan Donahue (1993-95) can talk about the Bamacacase and also the more than 1,000 other assassinationscarried out during their time. (The agents-some of whomhave previously been named In print as C.I.A. men by myselfand others-were identified through interviews with U.S.and Guatemalan officials and through written sources, includingU.S. pay manifests.)The point of calling these men would not be to use themas fall guys for Washington’s crimes (the policy, after all, hasbeen made by the White House, the State Department andCongress Itself) but rather to illuminate-with firsthand details-howthe U.S. terror system works on the ground.Mariani, the only one of the station chiefs willing to speakto me at length on the record, inadvertently made a tellingpoint when he said that, in Guatemala, the U.S. role was“rather normal.” What Guatemalans experience as U.S. comanagementof a klller army, is, in U.S. Embassy terms, busnessas usual. Asked, for example, about U.S. relations withthe G-2, Mariani said, “As always, they were good.” Thoughhe claimed that during his stint the officer payroll was notreally that big, he said that, in practice, he could not recall“any aspect of the Guatemalan military being renegade or obstreperousor a problem for the U.S.” (As to internal embassyoperations, Marian] said: “At the country team meetingsI attended [presided over by the ambassador], I don’t rememberany sort of divlsion. . . . We’re a pretty orderly government.It gets boring at times.”)Manani’s theme of comity was echoed by General Gramajo.Gramajo, the mass killer recently found by a U.S. federaldistrict court to have “devised and directed . . . an indiscrim-inate campaign of terror against civilians,” told my colleagueEric Verhoogen that he was introduced to Sapia-Bosch (withwhom he “did offlcial business”) by Ambassador ThomasStroock (just as, he believes, he was introduced to Marianiby Stroock’s predecessor, James Michel) and that for himthere was no real distinction between the C.I.A. and the restof the embassy. As he put it, “It’s part of the country team,not separate identities.” (Grama10 also said that he first metBlocker at Fort Benning, Georgia, while taklng the 1960 RangerCourse at the U.S. Army Infantry School.)The C.I.A. men are civil servants in a global U.S. terrornet; If questioned, under oath, they could shed light on othersimilar operations. Among them: Chile (Royden), Argentina(Blocker), El Salvador (Brugger, McCavitt), Honduras(Shields) and Nicaragua (Sapia-Bosch), as well as the invasionsof the Dominican Republic (1965, Blocker) and EastTimor (1975, Shields). Sapia-Bosch worked in the White Housefrom 1982 to 1983 as President Reagan’s chlef adviser on CentralAmerican affairs. During the early 1980s Brugger was thedeputy chlef of station in El Salvador, where, according toRicardo Castro, a Salvadoran death squad officer he recruited,Brugger oversaw (and sat in on) interrogation training sessions(Castro was the translator for North a American C.I.A.instructor) that at times included instruction in electroshocktorture techniques [see Nairn, “Confesslons of a Death SquadOfficer,” The Progressrve, March 19861.It certainly appears at the moment, though, that Congressdoes not want such a probe. A senior investigator for the SenateIntelligence Committee says, for example, that he “hopes”the C.I.A. will “come to us” If it happens to notice that it hasanyone “susp~cious” on its payroll. But he sald the committeedoes not plan to review the full payroll itself. Likewise, amore senlor investigator scoffs at the report (passed on byRepresentative Robert Torricelli from people inside the agency)that a colonel in the National Security Agency has been destroyingfiles. He says the committee has to give the N.S.A.“a little leeway.” “We’d rather let them collect [the documents]first, then piggyback on their efforts.” The shredding reportmight be, he said, the idle charge of a spiteful nelghbor: “aguy down the street who the [N.S.A.] colonel complainsdoesn’t his cut grass.”ALLAN NAIRNAllan Nairn has wrrtten extensrvely on Guatemala and rtsrndrtary srnce 1980.
IJune 5, 1995 The Nation. 781Slash and BurnAsexpected, the Republican proposals to balancethe budget by 2002 call for savage cuts in thedomestic public sector. The “moderate” proposalof Senate Budget Committee chairman PeteDomenici would ax domestic spending over the next sevenyears by almost one-third to reach his goal of $1 trlllion insavings. Little was spared: Programs for educatlon, workertraining, infrastructure, health and safety, science and the environmenttook routine cuts of 25 to 50 percent and many wereeliminated. Medicare-supposedly untouchable-will be cut15 percent. The House’s intentions are even bloodier. Budgetchairman John Kasich matched the Domenici cuts and addedanother $360 billion to pay for the promised Republican taxcuts for the rich and still another $92 billion for an increasein military spending.The Republican budget was not without some sleight ofhand. In an effort to share the political backlash, budget plannerscall for a bipartisan commlsslon to specify exactly wherethe cuts in Medicare will come from. And although Kasich hasbilled himself as someone unafraid to cut business subsidies,almost $60 billion In annual corporate tax loopholes will not betouched. The G.O.P. did not come to town to make the richpay for a balanced budget. They know who their friends are.Which is more than you can say for many Democrats.Shortly after the plans were released recently, White HouseChief of Staff Leon Panetta and budget director Alice Rivlinassembled various Cablnet officers to denounce the cuts asheartless toward the poor and elderly, shortsighted towardchildren and dangerous for the economy. They are correct.But having for the past two years made deficit reduction thecenterpiece of its economic program, the Administration washoist with its own political petard.Bill Clinton’s initlal budget, reflecting his campaign theme,called for increased investment in schools, roads and technology.After it was defeated by one vote he turned on adime; President Invest-in-America became President Cut-the-Deficit. This co-optation of a Republlcan theme was regardedas a stroke of genius by the Washington punditry. Panetta andRivlin were heroes who proved to Wall Street that Clinton wastruly a New Democrat. As late as this past January A1 Gorewas saying on Face the Natron that the budget should be balancedby 2002. Panetta still says he favors eliminating thedeflcit but not by any certain date. Wlth both partles in agree-ment, the publicis now convinced that the deficit is the country’sbiggest economic problem. To make matters worse, theAdministration’s own budget for this year provides for a taxcut and an increase in military spending-despite the fact thatsix years after the end of the cold war the Pentagon is stillspendlng as much in real terms as it did In the mld-1970s. Ineffect, the White House has endorsed putting the burden ofdeficit reduction on social programs.While public sentlment for balancing the budget 1s strong,so is sentiment against balancmg it on the backs of the elderly,the poor, ordlnary taxpayers or state and local governments.So the Republicans will no doubt back off from imposing allthe pain on the mlddle class that balancmg the budget re-quires. “They cannot do this!” Panetta insisted. But the centralobjective of the G.O.P. leadership is not to ellminate thedeficit-any more than it was In the 1980s when Republicansquadrupled the national debt. Deficlt reduction is a cover forthe effort to destroy the government’s abllity to protect Americansagainst the excesses of the market, and to redistributenational resources away from the Democrats’ constituenciestoward the G.O.P.’s own.With help from accommodatlng Democrats, the problemof the deflclt has been blown way out of proportion. As longas annual deficits do not exceed the annual growth in nationalincome, the country can sustain them forever. The only reasondeficits may rise faster than income over the next decadeis the rising cost of medical care, for which the solution iscomprehensive health care reform, not the wholesale slaughterof federal programs. Moreover, the deficit is artificiallyinflated by the pecullar way the government keeps its books.Roughly $140 billion of the current $200 billion deficit representscapital investment, whlch under normal accountingprocedures would not be Included as an operating expendlture.Indeed, the proposed cuts in public investment will domore damage to the next generation than any deficit spendingthe investment represents.rnA REAL ENEMYhe same week that federal bureaucrats from theT Centers for Disease Control were donning protectivesults in Zaire to track and contain the latest outbreakof the killer Ebola virus, budget cutters on CapitolHill were urging slashes in foreign aid programsand C.E.0.s of the two remaining U.S. submarinemanufacturingfirms were wrestling over the $60 blllionWashington will spend on thlrty new attack subs. WhichIS the greater threat to the nation’s secunty-the lethalvirus or the unidentified enemy that these submarinesare designed to blast?Funding for the C.D.C.3 non-AIDS infectious dlseaseprogram has been on the rise in the past few years, butit’s still a modest effort by relative standards at $36 milliona year. Donald Henderson of the Johns HopkinsSchool of Public Health notes that if the United Statesand other developed countries hope to prevent a plagueof Ebola (or another deadly vlrus), they should spend$150 mllllon a year and fund fifteen early-warningcllnlcs near tropical forests and ten state-of-the-artvirology labs In the field.The Ebola scare demonstrates that the United Stateshas an enormous stake in what occurs in the Third WorldCongress eviscerates International env~ronmental, healthand development programs and wastes money on “defense”at our peril. For the prlce of one-tenth of one newsub-or one F-22 Jet fighter, or one C-17 military transportplane, or one B-2 bomber-the United States couldmount a comprehenslve anti-Ebola program. Where’sthe choice?DAVID
Page 1 and 2: June 5. 1995$2.50 U.S./$3.50 Canada
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Page 13 and 14: THE SIXTH ANNUALNATION/I.E STONE AW
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Page 17 and 18: WITH APOLOGIESTO PYGMALIONGIVE ME T
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