The Untold History of the United States

by Oliver Stone

  The trip had its share of unscripted moments. In Costa Rica, Sergio Erick Ardón, head of the People’s Revolutionary Movement, rose in the balcony of the National Theater and loudly indicted the U.S. president and his “militarization of Central America.”23

  In Colombia, Reagan was blindsided by President Belisario Betancur Cuartas, who used his toast to criticize Reagan’s efforts to “isolate” and “exclude” Cuba and Nicaragua from hemispheric peace and development efforts while tolerating murder by right-wing governments: “Our responsibility as heads of state does not allow us to remain unmoved by the daily opening of gravesites in the ground of our common geography: 30,000 graves in El Salvador, to mention only one nation, shock the drowsy conscience of leaders.” The Reagan entourage was furious with this attack. Nor were they pleased with the riots and demonstrations in downtown Bogotá or the crowds lining the streets greeting Reagan’s speeding motorcade with shouts of “Fuera!” or “Yanqui go home!”24 Unable to get all the “individual countries” straight, Reagan insulted his hosts in Brazil by saluting “the people of Bolivia.”25

  Reagan’s sorry spectacle of giving absolution to murderous dictators did not go unremarked back home. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis began an op-ed piece, appropriately titled “Howdy, Genghis,” with “Under the name of ‘anti-Communism,’ the President of the United States has just had a friendly meeting with a tyrant who makes a policy of mass murder. That is what has happened, in Ronald Reagan’s administration, to Americans’ belief that their country stands for basic human decency in the world.” Lewis described reports of Guatemalan soldiers descending on rural villages in helicopters, hacking women to death with machetes, torching huts, and gouging out eyes as part of a campaign to take the countryside back from the guerrillas. Lewis quoted the Boston Globe’s assessment of this antiguerrilla campaign as falling “somewhere between a pogrom and genocide.” He noted the fact that Reagan’s embrace of “torturers and murderers” extended beyond the leaders of Guatemala and El Salvador to include recent visits to Washington from the dictators of South Korea and the Philippines and an upcoming one from Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan, who since taking power in 1977 “has eliminated the political opposition and resorted regularly to torture.” Lewis ended with a poignant reminder that has rung true throughout all the decades of the American Empire: “The shame marks all of us. When the economic follies of the Reagan Administration have been forgotten, its insensitivity to human cruelty will still stain the name of the United States.”26

  The sense of outrage so eloquently expressed by Lewis was reinforced by reports released by Amnesty International, Americas Watch, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, and other human rights groups, detailing the ongoing murders and atrocities, and by remarks by a Guatemalan Jesuit priest, Reverend Ricardo Falla, S.J., at a press conference arranged by the American Anthropological Association. Falla, who was trained at Georgetown, charged that the purpose of organized massacres of Indians was to leave “no survivors” and hence “no memory” of what happened. He elaborated, “That is why babies and children are killed. It’s really incredible. These children, if they survive, will avenge the death of their parents. . . . These little ones are slit open with knives, or their heads are broken against rocks or beams of houses.” Father Falla described a massacre at San Francisco de Nentón, which transpired over an eight-hour period and included a break for dinner: “After killing the women and children, they stopped to eat the steaks which they had roasted from a bull they killed shortly after their arrival. They laughed at old people who cried out like sheep when the blunt knives did not cut their throats. They sang while they listened to the radios they stole from the Indians later in the evening, when the massacre was finished.”27

  In January 1983, Reagan ended the embargo on military aid. He authorized sales of military hardware. But Congress’s resistance forced Guatemala to rely on military aid primarily from close U.S. allies Israel and Taiwan. Israel was also providing military aid to El Salvador and the Nicaragua contras. CIA support for the Guatemalan military continued unabated. In August 1983, Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores overthrew Ríos Montt in a coup, ending the period known as “La Violencia” but not the violence itself. Following the coup, the CIA and State Department reported an increase in political killings and abductions. In February 1984, Ambassador Frederic Chapin cabled Washington about what he called “the horrible human rights realities in Guatemala.”28 The very next day, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Elliott Abrams and two other State Department officials approved a secret report urging Congress to resume military aid to Guatemala in light of its improved human rights record.

  In 1986, in a secret report, the State Department acknowledged a systematic campaign by “security forces and rightist paramilitary groups” to kidnap and murder potential rural social workers, medical personnel, and campesinos dating back to 1966 and peaking in 1984. Guatemala’s official Historical Clarification Commission issued a report in 1999 detailing the 626 massacres of Mayan villages carried out by the Guatemalan army, which it termed a “genocide.” It charged the CIA and other U.S. government agencies with providing direct and indirect support for the Guatemalan slaughter, whose death toll it estimated at 200,000.29

  The United States was perpetrating atrocities of a different sort in Nicaragua. Former members of Somoza’s thuggish Nicaraguan national guard had been gathering across the border in Honduras, where, with CIA Director Casey’s assistance, they plotted a return to power. They called themselves the contrarevolucionarios, or “contras” for short. Here, as elsewhere, Casey transformed Carter’s rudimentary covert operations into a massive undertaking. He set up a Central America Task Force to run things. He installed Duane Clarridge to head the Latin America division. Clarridge was the perfect foil. He knew nothing about Latin America, never having worked in the region, and spoke no Spanish.

  U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua Anthony Quainton pinpointed the start of the war for an interviewer: “The secret war began on March 15, 1982, when the CIA, using Nicaraguan agents, blew up the bridges that connected Nicaragua with Honduras.” It had actually begun earlier. That December, Congress banned the use of government funds to overthrow the Sandinista government. In the administration, moderates like Shultz had little voice as hard-line right wingers increasingly set a ruthless foreign policy in Nicaragua and beyond. Reagan lied to Congress about what the CIA was up to. Casey lied repeatedly, deliberately misleading the House and Senate select intelligence committees. According to Gates, “Casey was guilty of contempt of Congress from the day he was sworn in.”30 Shultz later said that he had complained to National Security Advisor Frank Carlucci in January 1987: “I told him that I had no confidence in the intelligence community, that I had been misled, lied to, cut out.”31 Congress nonetheless significantly expanded the intelligence budget, with much of the appropriation going to the CIA.

  In order to make an end run around Congress, Casey and NSC official Oliver North concocted an elaborate illegal operation. Aided by Israeli arms dealers, the United States sold missiles to its enemies in Iran at exorbitant prices and used the profits to fund the contras, with Latin American drug dealers often serving as intermediaries and receiving easier access to U.S. markets in return. With U.S. funds and CIA guidance, the contra army grew to 15,000. The CIA also recruited contract mercenaries from countries like Guatemala and El Salvador who launched independent attacks from offshore, bombing and mining coastal targets and commercial ports.

  Reagan defended the United States’ covert war with a flight of fancy that bore little resemblance to the reality on the ground in 1984. “The Nicaraguan people,” he said, “are trapped in a totalitarian dungeon, trapped by a military dictatorship that impoverishes them while its rulers live in privileged and protected luxury and openly boast their revolution will spread to Nicaragua’s neighbors as well. It’s a dictatorship made all the more insulting, all the more dangerous by the unwanted presence of thousands of Cuban,
Soviet-bloc and radical Arab helpers.”32 Reagan went so far as to call the contras “the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers,” a comparison so odious that it drew a sharp rebuke from the Organization of American Historians. Reagan’s “moral equivalents” were notorious for torturing, mutilating, and slaughtering civilians. Employing terrorist tactics, the contras destroyed schools, health care clinics, cooperatives, bridges, and power stations and were responsible for the deaths of most of the 30,000 civilians killed in the war. One advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff called them “the strangest national liberation organization in the world.” In his view, they were “just a bunch of killers.”33 The U.S. Embassy reported one former contra leader’s assertion that civilians who refused to join the contras were “shot or stabbed to death” and others were “burned to death in smelting ovens.” He said that kidnapped young girls were “raped night and day.”34

  Atrocities were also committed in El Salvador, where U.S. leaders decided to test their new post-Vietnam counterinsurgency doctrines and try to defeat an uprising without a large commitment of U.S. forces. First they expanded and modernized the Salvadoran army, which, by 1983, reached 53,000 troops, many of whom were trained in Fort Benning, Georgia, or in the U.S.-run School of the Americas in Panama. Former U.S. Ambassador Robert White, who served under both Carter and Reagan, testified before Congress:

  For 50 years El Salvador was ruled by a corrupt and brutal alliance of the rich and the military. The young officers revolt of 1979 attempted to break that alliance. It was then Reagan renewed tolerance and acceptance of the extreme right which led to the emergence of the National Republican Alliance, ARENA, and the rise of ex-Major Roberto D’Aubuisson.

  ARENA is a violent Fascist party modeled after the Nazis and certain revolutionary Communist groups. . . . The founders and chief supporters of ARENA are rich Salvadoran exiles headquartered in Miami and civilian activists in El Salvador. ARENA’S military arm comprises officers and men of the Salvadoran Army and security forces. . . . My Embassy devoted considerable resources to identifying the sources of rightwing violence and their contacts in Miami, Florida. . . . the Miami Six explained . . . that to rebuild the country, it must first be destroyed totally, the economy must be wrecked, unemployment must be massive, the junta must be ousted and a “good” military officer brought to power who will carry out a total cleansing—limpieza—killing 3 or 4 or 500,000 people. . . . Who are these madmen and how do they operate? . . . the principal figures are six enormously wealthy former landowners. . . . They hatch plots, hold constant meetings and communicate instructions to D’Aubuisson.35

  In March 1981, the CIA informed Vice President Bush that D’Aubuisson, the “principal henchman for wealthy landlords,” was running “the right-wing death squads that have murdered several thousand suspected leftists and leftist sympathizers during the past year.” Three American Maryknoll nuns and a Catholic layperson who had been involved in humanitarian relief work had been raped and slaughtered shortly before Reagan’s inauguration. UN ambassador-designate Jeane Kirkpatrick insisted, “the nuns were not just nuns” but FMLN “political activists.” Secretary of State Alexander Haig called them “pistol-packing nuns” and suggested to a congressional committee that “perhaps the vehicle the nuns were riding in may have tried to run a roadblock.”36

  One atrocity particularly stands out. U.S.-trained and armed Salvadoran troops slaughtered the 767 inhabitants of the village of El Mozote in late 1981. The victims, including 358 children under age thirteen, were stabbed, decapitated, and machine-gunned. Girls and women were raped. When New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner tried to expose what had occurred, the Wall Street Journal and other pro-Reagan newspapers assaulted Bonner’s credibility.

  Echoing Reagan, who anointed the contras “the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers,” the College Republicans distributed this flyer calling for support for “Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters.” Those “Freedom Fighters” were notorious for torturing, mutilating, and slaughtering civilians.

  The Times buckled under pressure and pulled Bonner out of El Salvador. Administration officials helped cover up the massacre. Conditions worsened. In late 1982, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs reported that El Salvador, along with Guatemala, had the worst record of human rights abuses in Latin America: “Decapitation, torture, disemboweling, disappearances and other forms of cruel punishment were reported to be norms of paramilitary behavior sanctioned by the Salvadoran government.”37 However, Elliott Abrams, assistant secretary of state for human rights, testified that the reports of death-squad involvement were “not credible.”38

  George Bush had trouble sympathizing with the suffering of the people in the United States’ backyard. Before Pope John Paul II visited Central America, Bush said he couldn’t understand how Catholic clergy could reconcile their religious beliefs with Marxist philosophy and tactics and support the insurgents. Reverend Theodore Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame, tried to explain that poverty and social injustice could easily lead priests to supporting Marxists or anyone else challenging the status quo. “Maybe it makes me a right-wing extremist,” Bush replied, “but I’m puzzled. I just don’t understand it.”39

  U.S. economic and military aid grew steadily during these years, spurred by the 1984 Kissinger Commission on Central America. Senator Jesse Helms was the point man for this effort in Congress. Administration officials deliberately concealed U.S. government documents implicating the Salvadoran National Police, the National Guard, and the Treasury Police so that congressional funding would continue. Under Carter and Reagan, Congress funneled nearly $5 billion to the tiny country, making it the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, per capita, in the world. Meanwhile, the death squads continued to cleave a path of destruction. The death toll reached 70,000. Approximately half a million Salvadorans tried to escape the violence by migrating to the United States in the 1980s, but most were turned back. In 1984, U.S. immigration officials admitted approximately one in forty Salvadoran asylum seekers, while almost all the anti-Communist applicants fleeing Nicaragua were welcomed.

  In 1980, Commentary magazine, the United States’ leading neoconservative journal, published a series of essays decrying what conservatives called the “Vietnam syndrome”—the revulsion against the Vietnam War that made Americans squeamish about using force to resolve international conflicts. Reagan agreed: “For too long, we have lived with the ‘Vietnam Syndrome.’ . . . Over and over they told us for nearly 10 years that we were the aggressors bent on imperialistic conquests. . . . It is time we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause. . . . We dishonor the memory of 50,000 young Americans who died in that cause when we give way to feelings of guilt.”40

  Bogged down in protracted proxy wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador, Reagan hungered for an easy military victory that would restore Americans’ self-confidence and get the Vietnam monkey off America’s back. His opportunity came in 1983 when a radical faction overthrew the revolutionary government of Maurice Bishop in Grenada, a tiny Caribbean island with 100,000 inhabitants, murdering its leaders. Before his death, Bishop had alleged that a campaign was under way to destabilize his nation by “the vicious beasts of imperialism”—the United States.41 Using the resulting instability as a pretext for action, U.S. officials decided to invade and topple the new government, despite clear opposition from the United Nations, the Organization of American States (OAS), and even British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. They pressured reluctant Caribbean nations to call for U.S. intervention.

  The timing proved fortunate for the administration. While preparing the invasion, the United States suffered a humiliating setback when a powerful truck bomb blew up a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon, leaving 241 dead. Desperate for a distraction, Reagan announced that the invasion of Grenada was needed to rescue endangered American medical students on the island. The students, however, were in no immediate danger. When the dean of the medical school polled them, 90 percent said they wanted to stay.
To avoid even the minimalist kind of scrutiny the United States had received in Vietnam, U.S. officials banned media from accompanying invading forces for their own “safety” and offered government footage. The 7,000 U.S. invaders encountered more resistance than they had bargained for from a small force of poorly armed Cubans. The entire operation was logistically bungled from the start. Twenty-nine U.S. soldiers died, and more than 100 were wounded. Nine helicopters were lost. Most troops were quickly withdrawn.

  Skulls of victims murdered by a death squad lie discarded in a lava field in El Playon, El Salvador. In March 1981, the CIA informed Vice President Bush that the Salvadoran leader Roberto D’Aubuisson was running “the right-wing death squads that have murdered several thousand suspected leftists and leftist sympathizers during the past year.” But with the United States funding and promoting counterinsurgency in the Central American nation, neoconservative Reagan officials denied reports tying atrocities to the Salvadoran government.

  Congressman Dick Cheney of Wyoming participated in the first post-invasion congressional delegation and applauded the United States’ new cando image around the world. When another delegation member, Representative Don Bonker of Washington, derided claims that the students had been at risk, Cheney blasted him in a Washington Post op-ed. As if in a dress rehearsal for lying about Iraq two decades later, Cheney claimed that “the Americans were in imminent danger,” “every effort was made to secure their evacuation by diplomatic means,” and the new Grenadan government posed “a threat to the security of the entire region.”42 Fellow delegation member Representative Ron Dellums of California challenged Cheney’s distortions, calling the invasion “a thinly veiled effort to use American students and a tiny black Caribbean country to mask the further militarization of American foreign policy.” Dellums also dismissed the claim of protecting the students, noting “our delegation could not find one confirmed instance in which an American was threatened or endangered before the invasion. In fact, the . . . campus was a mere 20 meters from an unprotected beach. If the safety of the students was the primary goal, why did it take the U.S. forces three days to reach it?”43 By a ten-to-one margin, the UN General Assembly “deeply deplor[ed]” the “armed intervention in Grenada,” which it called “a flagrant violation of international law.”44