Oliver's Twist

by Craig Oliver

  I owed my war experience in El Salvador to the Reagan administration’s knee-jerk anti-Communism, an ideology that cost the lives of thousands in that country. Most victims were peasants, some were aid workers, and a few were priests dedicated to the tenets of liberation theology. Though officially denounced by the Vatican, this theology provided a moral rationale for Catholic priests and laymen to support the revolutionary struggle in the name of social justice.

  In America, it was necessary only to brand such reformers as Communists to justify the corruption and human rights abuses of the U.S.-backed military regime or the actions of landowners who killed peasant farmers rather than accept change. The assassination squads of the Salvadoran security forces were free to do their work without interference, and the leftist guerrillas retaliated in kind; neither side gave any quarter in that butcher shop of a civil war.

  In early 1980, the activist Catholic archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Romero, was murdered on the steps of his cathedral. Shortly after, an American lay missionary and three Catholic nuns were likewise shot to death. The United States’ position became crystal clear when Secretary of State Al Haig declared that the nuns were trying to organize farm workers and were caught in the crossfire with the military. His suggestion that they may have been engaged in a firefight with the Salvadoran army indicated how far the administration was prepared to bend the truth in order to defend its policies. In fact, the nuns and the archbishop were early victims of El Salvador’s military death squads.

  In one of his frequent efforts to wax Churchillian, Haig had also pronounced, “the final battle for Latin America is taking place in El Salvador.” American intelligence officers whispered the party line in the ears of reporters. The Communists were no longer content with Cuba, we were told; first they would seize Central America, then Mexico. The administration was still retailing a shopworn domino theory. In their minds, El Salvador was another Vietnam, a test of American mettle that this time would not be lost to the Communists. The lessons of southeast Asia seemed to have been forgotten, and right on cue, a new generation of military advisers and mercenaries, official observers and covert spies, misguided lefties and well-meaning aid workers all headed south to witness the cataclysm. The reporters, photographers, and television crews were not far behind. True to form, Don Cameron intended to expose his viewers to the horror of war up close. He dismissed coverage of boring diplomatic manoeuvres and demanded front-line “bang-bang.”

  Such were our producers’ orders when the CTV crew from Washington, equipped with bulletproof vests purchased from a Virginia arms dealer, landed at the airport in the capital city of San Salvador. The vests captured the attention of troops at the terminal, which was literally an armed camp. We were directed to a nearby police station, a steel wire–reinforced bunker about ten minutes’ walk from the terminal building, to obtain the necessary photo identification and hand over our passports.

  As we arrived, members of the notorious Treasury Police, distinctive in their shiny helmets, were leading out two men, perspiring and white-faced. The prisoners had their thumbs tied behind their backs with wire. While we were negotiating with the sergeant, two shots rang out, followed a few seconds later by two more reports. That told us the nature of the country we were entering: In the right circumstances, any policeman or soldier had the power of life and death over others. This rattled me somewhat, but the sergeant didn’t even pause mid-sentence. Wired thumbs were favourite signatures of the Treasury Police; we were to see them on many corpses in the years ahead.

  In every war zone, the foreign press tends to cluster at a favourite hotel. In El Salvador it was the elegant Camino Real. We were among the earliest arrivals, having landed in the steamy summer of 1981, before Haig raised the stakes and before American print and TV journalists descended in herds. The Real lobby, with its ensemble of reporters and whores, intelligence officers (from both the CIA and the Salvadoran army), and rebel sympathizers, resembled a tableau from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. All drank companionably in the bar and around the pool, with booze and marijuana in ample supply. It went without saying that the phones were bugged. We dropped our bags, and then sought out our designated contacts.

  It was clear that the Salvadoran Army was utterly untrained and ill-equipped to take on any foe. A friendly colonel invited us to accompany a patrol into the mountains near Palo Grande, a guerrilla stronghold. The soldiers, some without boots, wore ratty, mismatched uniforms and carried a variety of old and new weapons. They were led by a drunken captain whom we plied with beer for his friendship and approval in the eyes of the ranks.

  The region, we were assured, had been swept clean of guerrillas in earlier combat. However, no one had told the guerrillas. We had marched the dusty, bug-infested jungle trails for about an hour before we were suddenly ambushed. Two nearby soldiers instantly fled. I felt it best to jump into a ditch with my cameraman.

  A ragged firefight ensued and continued sporadically for the rest of the day until the army brought in an armoured vehicle. It blasted away at the suspected enemy stronghold, but none of the soldiers had any idea of their true target. A few yards from me a soldier’s helmet went spinning into the air. It had caught a bullet, but the fellow beneath it was okay, save for a bad headache. We videotaped dead and wounded soldiers being flown out in small helicopters that were totally unsuited for the job.

  Lying in the relative safety of my hole, I had time to consider that this is what happens when people cannot settle their differences: They kill each other. The last man standing wins. The thought was not especially profound, but interesting in that I was seemingly lucid in the middle of a pitched battle. Nausea and trembling always gripped me after the incident. In the moment, one simply did what was necessary to survive.

  A few weeks later, I attended a dinner party at the Canadian embassy at which Al Haig was a guest. He listened closely but grim-faced to tales of my encounters with the sorry armed forces of El Salvador. “Goddamn,” the former army general declared, “we have to get those people some training.” A massive military assistance and Special Forces training program was launched soon after, but I take no credit: The planning had clearly been under way for some time. Bolstering the Salvadoran regime kept it alive, but also extended the bloodbath until the end of the Cold War brought a lull in U.S.-Soviet rivalry.

  In the meantime, we journalists entered into a deadly dance. One morning, just to remind us of the risks, the killing squads left the body of a local reporter lying in the parking lot of the Camino Real for all to see as we went out on our assignments. How much protection could we expect from our army-issued ID cards or the bold-lettered Prenza taped to the sides of our news crew vans? Not much, even for those of us from the West. At the hotel, we made a point of loudly praising the courageous struggle of the Salvadoran people against the godless commies. Letting anyone know what you really thought of the right-wing regime was dangerous.

  Into this macabre atmosphere came a Dutch television crew who felt it was their duty to expose the corruption and depredations of the U.S.-backed government. We were all doing that in our satellite reports, but this bunch felt the need to broadcast their views publicly. They arranged what they believed to be a clandestine interview with the guerrilla leaders. Their contact was actually an army spy; all five members of the crew were shot in the jungle. An army investigation trotted out the old line that the victims had been caught in crossfire, but the evidence indicated they were set up. The incident was a sobering reminder of the consequences of bad judgment and misplaced trust in such circumstances.

  While serving in Ottawa before the Washington stint, I had been a casual friend to an American diplomat. He was polished and smooth, very interested in Liberal government plans, especially energy policy. This was not unusual, since at the time a major objective of the United States was to ensure long-term supplies of Canadian oil and gas. But I suspected the diplomat was more than a simple embassy official, so I was not surprised when a contact in the Pri
me Minister’s Office warned me that my friend was a CIA liaison officer. Even so, we shared an enthusiasm for skiing and we continued to meet socially until he called one day to tell me he was being transferred. We soon lost touch.

  Later in Washington, before one of my trips to El Salvador, I met with a woman whom I’d hired there a year before as a translator. She was one of a community of Americans who were committed leftists and acted secretly for the Salvadoran revolutionaries—in effect, a rebel agent. I hoped she could help me arrange a visit to a guerrilla camp. I was given written instructions on how to link up with the guerrillas, directions I was to memorize and then destroy. (I still have the note; I didn’t trust my memory.)

  The details are reminiscent of a bad spy thriller, but in view of the fate of the Dutch film crew, I regarded them as deadly serious. I was to meet my contact in, of all places, a McDonald’s restaurant. I should wear a sports jacket with a pin in my left lapel. I gave the translator my passport photo. The contact, who would introduce himself as Juan, would leave his left shoelace untied. When I pointed this out, he would reply, incongruously, “In my country, smart people keep their right shoelace loose.” If there was any deviation from this script, I was to laugh at the remark and leave. We were to meet at 10:15 a.m. If no one appeared within half an hour, the rendezvous was off.

  I waited an hour, but Juan did not show. On my return to the hotel, a well-dressed Hispanic woman bumped into me as I was crossing the parking lot. In the few seconds it would have taken to say, “Excuse me, señor,” she said, “Another time; not safe.”

  That night a shot was fired through the window of the hotel room two doors down from me. The occupant, a female German radio reporter, was unhurt but sobbing hysterically as everyone in the floor rushed to see what had happened. She was much braver the next morning, displaying a spent rifle slug of the same calibre used by the Salvadoran troops. Hotel security claimed there had been fighting in the barrio nearby and the bullet was doubtless a stray one. I didn’t think I was being excessively paranoid to wonder whether the local officials had intended to send me a message but delivered it to the wrong room.

  Paranoia took full flight two days later. An official at the U.S. embassy in San Salvador had granted me a background briefing on the military and political situation. The embassy was protected by a wall of sandbags and bunkers, the ugly snouts of heavy machine guns poking out here and there. At the entrance, I gave the Marines the name of the political officer I was to see. Inside, I was escorted through a labyrinth of corridors and steel doors and into an office with a view out over the city. The window was made of thick bulletproof glass; embedded in a bubble halfway through the glass was a rifle bullet. Stranger still was the embassy staffer who came in to brief me. He sported a beard and had lost weight and seemed to have changed his name, but smiling back at me was my acquaintance from Ottawa. He warned me to hit the floor if an alarm sounded.

  My acquaintance had the same charming manner and easy rapport as before. We might just as easily have been in Rome or London. But his tone changed as we said our goodbyes. He warned me to be careful about the friends I made in the country, driving home his point in unmistakable terms. “We are managing to exert some control over the army we trained,” he cautioned, “but the paramilitary bunch are pretty much out of our hands.”

  With that he disappeared back into the bowels of the embassy, leaving me wondering if he knew about my aborted meeting. Could he have somehow intervened on my behalf? Or was I getting bushed, seeing spooks where none existed? He and I never met again.

  Eventually, I did meet up with the guerrillas, though not through an arranged assignation. In 1982 the insurgents blew up a steel bridge spanning the Lempa River in west-central Salvador. They isolated a vast mountainous section of the country that they then declared liberated territory. It became their sanctuary and redoubt between assaults on government troops. The Salvadoran military, by then trained and equipped by American advisers, mobilized to clear the guerrillas out of the disputed territory. The operation was to be the army’s first major assault of the conflict, and our CTV crew was sent to record the newly equipped troops in action.

  There were four of us in the well-marked van: the sound and cameraman, an interpreter, me, and ABC News correspondent Jack Smith. Jack was the son of Howard K. Smith, one of America’s pre-eminent foreign correspondents, who was famous for his World War II coverage for CBS alongside Edward R. Murrow. Jack had opted to join us that day because, as he had observed, the Canadians always had beer on ice in the back of their news vans, a luxury in that sweltering heat. I did not know Jack well but was intrigued by his nickname, “Sandbag Jack.”

  We arrived at the Lempa River where the bridge, a shaky edifice high above the river, had been repaired to allow a single vehicle to cross on makeshift steel runners. Our van crossed to await the army advance. The Salvadoran troops looked as if headed for a festive occasion. There were two hundred of them, all carrying M-16 rifles with yellow ribbons around the barrels. For many of these recruits, army boots had been their first shoes, and the ribbons would help ensure they were shooting at the proper targets. Assuming the army had a lengthy march into the countryside before it encountered guerrilla fighters, we drove on ahead.

  To find the battle, if it could be found at all, we usually just headed toward the sound of gunfire. But this day there were no sounds beyond the running engine of our van. I had learned to be wary of war’s silence; it usually preceded the unexpected explosion for which no preparation was possible. We drove slowly with an eye out for landmines, keeping the windows down in the intense heat as we made our way along a bumpy road half overgrown with weeds. We had progressed about ten miles when heavily armed men started to appear on the hilltops ahead; others popped up behind us. They were battle-hardened fighters of the Farabundo Marti Revolutionary Front, obviously waiting in ambush for the leading troops of the army to appear. For a few seconds we considered whether to run for it but abandoned that idea when the squad ahead levelled weapons at our windshield.

  We were ordered up against the van, arms spread across the roof, rifle muzzles in our backs. In the only Spanish I knew, I shouted that we were periodista canadiense, no disparen. I was not being brave or lying for Jack’s sake; I simply meant to describe the group quickly and forgot about our American companion. At that the tension eased slightly. The squad’s commander demanded the photo identity card that all journalists were required to carry, confirming their country of origin. To my immense relief, he was satisfied to read mine alone, and he handed it back with something resembling a smile. “Nicaragua,” he said. I believed he must have been referring to the fact that the Canadian government had refused to support the U.S. embargo of the leftist regime in Nicaragua (thank you, Pierre). Then I remembered Jack sitting in the back seat. I also remembered that anti-Somoza guerrillas had shot to death an ABC reporter at a similar roadblock not long before—in Nicaragua. The insurgents of both countries co-operated closely.

  Fortunately, the chief was apparently satisfied that we were all Canadians. In English he questioned me about the strength of the army he was facing. No threats were necessary to elicit what I knew. They had light tanks and heavy machine guns, I said; his company was outnumbered. He seemed to appreciate that information. They took our watches and cash, por la revolución, helped themselves to our cold beer, and sent us on our way.

  They let us keep the video we had shot of the exchange, so the day was not lost. On the return trip we drove in the direction of the approaching army like the proverbial bat out of hell. Until then, Jack had said not a word, but I have a memory of him exhaling audibly. Had they known he was an American, they would no doubt have killed or kidnapped him.

  Jack had such a polite and cool demeanour that I was surprised to read in a later New York Times article that he was a combat veteran of the Seventh Cavalry in Vietnam. In fact, he was a survivor of the first large-scale battle between North Vietnam regulars and the U.S. army in the La Drang
Valley in November 1965, when his unit suffered 93 percent casualties. Their position was overrun by a human wave assault; twenty soldiers around him were killed by machine gun bullets. Jack fired straight into the mass of oncoming Vietnamese until his gun was empty and he was knocked to the ground. He lay there surrounded by dying and wounded men, pretending to be dead. A Vietnamese soldier used Jack as a sandbag, mounting his machine gun on top of him. Jack told of how the gunner was, like himself, young and frightened; he could feel the man’s knees trembling as they dug into his ribs. The Americans counterattacked and the soldier was killed in a grenade burst that left Jack wearing pieces of shrapnel in his head until his death twenty years later.

  The prospect of being wounded in the jungles was a greater worry to us than death. Nothing could be done if one of us got killed, but a seemingly superficial injury could be fatal in those conditions. We did not even carry a medical kit, a situation that has since changed for television crews, who today receive weeks of military and first-aid training before assignments in dangerous places.

  We were reminded of our vulnerability during a combat patrol with one of the specially trained Salvadoran units. A short firefight erupted as the soldiers moved in to push insurgents from a village. As happens too often, civilians were wounded and an army medic treated one of them, a young man, by the side of the road. There would be no medical evacuation for him, even if it had been available for the troops, which it was not. The medic moved on.

  We watched all this from our own van. If we took the young man to the nearest hospital, roughly two hours away, his life might be saved. But we were not there to provide ambulance service, and who knew how many other casualties could claim our help among the villagers or the combatants. Here was a painful moral dilemma that we had no time to resolve. We decided to carry on and check again on the trip back. By the time we returned, the young man had bled to death. In this awful moment we could only repeat to ourselves the mantra that in the midst of death and calamity, reporters are doomed to be observers—that we cannot do our own jobs if we become involved. It was no comfort.