Observing our Hermanos de Armas: U.S. Military Attaches in Guatemala, Cuba and Bolivia, 1950-1964 (Latin American Studies (Routledge (Firm)).)

Advance Praise for Observing Our Hermanos de Armas: “This well-crafted and path-breaking study carefully reconstructs the roles played by U.S. military and naval attachés in America’s relations with three Latin American nations experiencing coups and revolutions in the 1950s and 1960s.” Peter Karsten, author of The Military in America “This book provides significant new information on the important role of military attachés in Latin America and makes a valuable contribution to the growing comparative literature on U.S. Cold War policies. His chapter on Bolivia lays to rest many of the rumors surrounding the role of Colonel Edward Fox in the coup of 1964.” Kenneth D.Lehman, author of Bolivia and the United States: A Limited Partnership “This book is a very valuable addition to the literature on Washington’s military intelligence capabilities and internal civil-military relations issues during three critically important Cold War movements in Latin America.” Daniel M.Masterson, author of Militarism and Politics in Latin America: Peru from Sanchez Cerro to Sendero Luminoso “One is impressed by the maturity and sophistication of this work, as well as by the extraordinary breadth and depth of the research. The author’s access to hitherto classified materials ensures the reader of fresh information and insights. All of this constitutes a well-organized and clearly written outstanding whole.” Charles D.Ameringer, author of U.S. Foreign Intelligence: The Secret Side of American History “As the United States navigates through the challenges of the twenty-first century, it will need competent military analysts to sift through mountains of information and produce useable assessments. Rob Kirkland’s book is a must-read for anyone concerned about the capabilities of those analysts or involved in educating and training them.” Colonel Robert A.Doughty, author of Warfare in the Western World: Military Operations Since 1871 “This study offers a comparative perspective on U.S. attachés in critical revolutionary situations in Latin America, with new insights derived from sources not usually available to the public. It should become a basic book for students of U.S.-Latin American relations.” Harold D.Sims, author of Sandinista Nicaragua: Pragmatism in a Political Economy in Formation “Kirkland has produced a fine scholarly contribution to the literature on the little understood and often overlooked intelligence role of the nation’s military attachés.” Richard R.Valcourt, Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence

L AT I N A M E R I C A N S T U D I E S SOCIAL SCIENCES

AND

L AW

Edited by

David Mares University of California, San Diego

A ROUTLEDGE SERIES

LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES: SOCIAL SCIENCES AND LAW David Mares, General Editor

OBSERVING O UR HERMANOS DE ARMAS: U.S. Military Attaches in Guatemala, Cuba, and Bolivia, 1950–1964 Robert O.Kirkland

O B S E RV I N G O U R H ERMANOS DE A RMAS U.S. Military Attachés in Guatemala, Cuba, and Bolivia, 1950–1964

Robert O.Kirkland

ROUTLEDGE NEW YORK & LONDON

Published in 2003 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 www.routledge-ny.com Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE www.routledge.co.uk Copyright © 2003 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kirkland, Robert O., 1966– Observing our hermanos de armas: U.S. military attaches in Guatemala, Cuba, and Bolivia, 1950–1964/Robert O.Kirkland. p. cm.—(Latin American studies. Social sciences and law) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-94784-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Military attachés—United States. 2. Military attachés—Latin America. 3. Latin America— History—1948–1980. 4. United States—Military relations—Latin America. 5. Latin America— Military relations—United States. 6. United States—Foreign relations—Latin America. 7. Latin America—Foreign relations—United States. 8. Civil-military relations—Latin America—History– 20th century. I. Title. II. Latin American studies (Routledge (Firm)) III. Series: Latin American studies (Routledge (Firm). Social sciences and law. UB260.K57 2003 355'.0328’097309045—dc21 2003012743 ISBN 0-203-50795-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-57789-2 (Adobe eReader) ISBN 0-415-94784-7 (Print Edition)

To Victoria and Grace

vii

Contents

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction

1

Chapter One The Attaché Corps in the Pre-Cold War Era, 1888–1945 Chapter Two The Attachés, Their Duties, Responsibilities, Education, Training, and Attitudes, 1945–1964

13 27

Chapter Three U.S. Attachés, Guatemala, and the Overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz, 1950–1954

55

Chapter Four U.S. Attachés and the Cuban Revolution, 1952–1958

77

Chapter Five U.S. Attachés and the Bolivian MNR, 1958–1964

101

Conclusions

125

Appendix One Hypothesis: Why Potential Generals Don’t Want to Be Attachés

131

Appendix Two Expected Levels of Absolute Speaking and Reading Proficiency in Languages Taught at the Foreign Service Institute

132

Appendix Three Absolute Language Proficiency Ratings

133

Notes

135

Bibliography

163

Index

173 ix

Acknowledgments

This book is in part the story of officers and gentlemen. I would like to take the time here to thank some officers, gentlemen, and gentlewomen who gave their time, energy, and wisdom to help me along the way. I begin by thanking my wife, Victoria, who has known me for as long as I have been working on this book. She always showed me the love and support that is so necessary to complete a project such as this. I would also like to thank my mother and father, Sue and John, and my brothers, Joe and Dave, for always supporting me. At Routledge, series editor David Mares was a model of supportive, patient, and insightful counsel for a first time author. Kimberly Guinta, associate editor, asked me to contribute to the series and helped guide me through the intricacies of the production phase to print. I could not think of a better publisher to work with than Routledge. At the University of Pittsburgh I would like to thank Peter Karsten, for his guidance and advice. Harold Sims convinced me to attend Pittsburgh for graduate studies and most importantly (from my perspective), urged me to attend a Spanish immersion program in Cuernavaca, Mexico, my first summer at Pittsburgh. It was there where I met my wife, Victoria, who was also studying at the same escuela para extranjeros. At Pittsburgh I would also like to thank Reid Andrews, Paul Hammond, Silvia Borzutzky, Donald Goldstein, and the late Michael Jiménez. At the United States Military Academy I would like to acknowledge Colonel Robert Doughty, Professor and Head of the Department of History, for selecting me to come teach at West Point and supporting me in this endeavor. Marsha and Linda Frey and Sam Watson took too much time out of their busy schedules to help proofread the book and comment on my drafts. The Faculty Research Development Fund at the Military Academy helped fund two trips to archives for this research. This is a story about attachés and many of them kindly gave their time to speak to me regarding their experiences: Wendell Bevan, Manuel Chavez, Edward Fox, Phillip Klepak, Lionel Krisel, Aloysius McCormick, Richard Park, and Howard Slaton. xi

xii

Acknowledgments

This book would have never been completed without the help of dozens of archivists and command historians. I list the most important here: Deane Allan, Brian Shellum, and Jim Claxton at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington D.C.; Richard Boylan and Neil Carmichael at the National Archives II, College Park, Maryland; Michael Waesche at the Washington National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland; Jim McNaughton at the Defense Language Institute, Monterrey, California; Major Harry Newton and his staff at the U.S. Air Force War College Library, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama; and the archivists at the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Presidential Libraries. Scholars who have taken the time to speak to me on the subject of attachés include: Robert Alexander, Charles Ameringer, Scott Koch, Kenneth Lehman, Brian Loveman, Daniel Masterson, Stephen Rabe, Russell Ramsey, Lars Schoultz, and Larmon Wilson. I would also like to recognize all the fine scholars at the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies (MACLAS) who have commented on papers I have delivered at their annual conference over the past five years. I truly enjoyed being part of the executive council. Thank you all. Finally, this book is dedicated to my wife Victoria and our daughter Grace Anne.

Introduction

The military attaché system dates from the pre-World War II era. In those years, policymakers in Washington had limited and often inadequate information on the latest overseas military innovations. Because of the United States’ isolationist tendencies, the armed forces were small and short of equipment. In the inter-war period, the military in Germany, Italy, and Japan began to rearm and test new and emerging military technologies and tactics, not just in theory, but in practice in China, Spain, and Ethiopia. In these circumstances, posting U.S. military officers at selected embassies abroad to gather information about foreign military developments was crucial because these advances had important implications for the organization and equipping of the U.S. armed forces and for the security of the United States. This intelligence gathering effort could only proceed if attachés developed working relationships with foreign military personnel. Close relations improved the chances of obtaining information and of establishing channels likely to be useful should those foreign forces one day be U.S. allies. Many attachés—especially those who served in Tokyo and Berlin—did an outstanding job of outlining attitudes, cultivating contacts, and reporting on the military preparations for war of these two countries.1 In these cases, the military attaché system provided a prudent and useful means for U.S. military forces to stay informed about important military developments elsewhere. After the war, a vastly different situation developed. Aside from the Soviet Union, there was no power that could challenge the United States on a global scale. America’s allies made U.S. equipment, doctrine, and organization the standard for their countries. At the same time, Washington substantially increased the U.S. diplomatic and military presence around the globe in response to Cold War concerns of a communist threat to capitalism and democracy. The attaché corps, small and quite limited in its scope before the war, expanded sixteen-fold to include representation in over seventy countries 1

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Observing Our Hermanos de Armas

on every continent. Yet, the mission of the attaché changed little; it remained that of providing intelligence on foreign militaries.

LATIN AMERICA

In the pre-World War II period, Latin America received little attention from the War Department. Short of funds during the depression and having little or no interest in the hemisphere, the U.S. had a very limited attaché presence in the Americas. In the 1930s for instance, there were only ten attaches stationed in all of Latin America; and these served primarily in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. Central America had only two attaches who traveled between five countries and wrote occasional dispatches to their superiors. In contrast, the U.S. had many times that number serving in most European embassies.2 Like the rest of the world, the situation in Latin America changed greatly in the 1940s and 1950s. The area became, in the words of political scientist Peter Smith, a “battleground and prize in the conflict between communism and capitalism.”3 Launching an anticommunist crusade, the United States institutionalized military alliances with nations of the region, offered to collaborate with authoritarian and military regimes as long as they were anticommunist, and encouraged friendly governments to crush internal “subversives.” Compared to the pre-World War II attachés based in Europe, attachés in Latin America faced a much more challenging environment. The complex situations these attachés faced stemmed in part from Latin American militaries’ involvement in politics.4 Linda Rodríguez has correctly observed that a person cannot comprehend the nature of Latin American armed forces unless one realizes that they function, to a greater extent than most other militaries, within a political system.5 The drive of many Latin American militaries toward professionalization in the pre-World War II period and governmental willingness to use the military to control rebellions, strikes, political dissidents, and rural and urban mass movements had the long-term effect of politicizing Latin American armed forces. The wave of military coups between 1920 and 1950 reflected this politicization. By the time U.S. attachés arrived in great numbers in the early 1950s, the majority of hemispheric countries were either ruled or influenced to a great extent by the military. As a general rule, the Pentagon had little interest in military innovation from Latin American countries long considered backward. While it was true that attachés still needed to report on the combat capabilities of hemispheric militaries, they did so in order to assess whether or not these countries could aid in the defense of the Americas against a Soviet attack, and later in the 1950s and 1960s, to consider the question of whether the military was vulnerable to communist subversion.

Introduction

3

Attachés were expected to report on political-military developments. The Pentagon, the State Department, and other agencies asked attachés to answer a whole range of political questions such as the military’s support of civilian government or the likelihood of a military coup. Because in some countries the military actually ruled the country, the military attaché was often the closest contact the U.S. embassy had to the president and his advisors. The attaché became more involved in reporting day-to-day political events rather than his traditional job of reporting military capability. These new reporting requirements required a new set of skills that attachés had not needed earlier. In the pre-war period, if the attaché had limited language skills he could still judge the combat effectiveness of militaries through simple observation such as attending military maneuvers or observing actual wartime operations. In the political-military realm however, attachés needed fluency in a foreign language, an appreciation of the history and culture of their host country, and diplomatic skills to establish relationships of trust and confidence with foreign officers. Such skills of course were helpful to the pre-war attaché as well. However, the exceedingly complex environment of political-military questions demanded these new skills to a much greater degree.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The current literature on the subject of U.S. military attachés during the Cold War is scant and often referred to only tangentially in other works because of the difficulty of getting Cold War era documents declassified.6 The indexing and filing system for Cold War military intelligence documents located at the National Archives II, College Park, Maryland, is non-existent or at best disorganized and confusing. There are thousands of boxes in Record Group 319.12, Records of the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (OACSI), with no finding aids.7 Thus, the researcher who wishes to request declassification of certain documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) does not know what specific boxes or documents to request. In the boxes which do have indices and on which FOIA requests could be filed, most researchers avoid the hassle. The average time after filing a request for declassification is about three years. Because researchers cannot view documents before the FOIA process is completed, there is no way of knowing if they would be of any use. As a result, most scholars when addressing intelligence matters have relied on memoirs or books from former intelligence officers or government officials, personal interviews, congressional investigation testimony, and various declassified documents in the National Security Archive, the Declassified Document Quarterly Series (DDQS), or the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and State Department FOIA services.8 In this study, several of the above-mentioned difficulties in obtaining primary documents have been overcome. By use of a military security

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Observing Our Hermanos de Armas

clearance, the author was able to view hundreds of classified intelligence memoranda relating to military attachés, the majority of which are located in the Command Historian’s Archive at DIA and in the classified vault at the National Archives in College Park. The author then requested declassification of specific documents under the FOIA. This research technique is similar to that used by government historians who write official histories. They also have access to classified documents and then request declassification review in order to publish their works for the general public. Thus, this study, like official government histories, draws the majority of its conclusions from a thorough analysis of government documents that are generally not available to scholars. Scholars who have studied military attachés have concentrated their efforts on pre-Cold War attachés, especially on the inter-war period and U.S. attaches who reported from Germany, Great Britain, Russia, and Spain. This focus is not surprising because these dispatches and documents outlining the role of the U.S. intelligence community are available and are unclassified at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Generally, scholars who have looked at attaché reports commend the accuracy and thoroughness of the dispatches. Officers stationed in Germany, Spain, and Japan sent a number of memoranda outlining the growing power and innovation of these military powers.9 Thesesame scholars, however, are more critical of the War Department because of its failure to use these reports in the formulation of military plans. Ernest May concluded that the forces with which the United States entered World War II were designed virtually without analysis of intelligence about potential enemies. President Franklin D.Roosevelt and his armed services simply ordered the most powerful weapons that American industry could produce and Congress would finance.10 Scott Koch, who has studied U.S. attachés in preWorld War II Germany, notes that the files from U.S. Army intelligence were underused, especially in the assessment of German rearmament.11 Most scholars who cover attaches in the Cold War era do so very briefly because these authors focus on the larger issues of U.S. foreign policy or the U.S. intelligence community. When these authors do comment on attachés, they have divergent views based on their predilections or previously held beliefs. One group which includes Latin American scholars such as Piero Gleijeses and writers on the U.S. intelligence community such as Richard Betts, Christopher Andrew, Seymour Hersh, and Victor Marchetti contend that military attachés to Latin America lacked the training and cultural awareness necessary to understand their host country and its military officers. Their claims regarding attachés are influenced to a large extent by their perception that military attachés serving overseas in the 1950s and 1960s lacked cultural empathy. They typified the “Ugly American.” These scholars lump all attachés into one group without differentiating between attachés or providing concrete evidence as to why they think that attachés performed poorly. Andrew and Hersh go further in stating that attachés hurt rather

Introduction

5

than helped U.S. intelligence. They claim that policymakers regarded attachés as amateurs compared to career intelligence officers or Foreign Service officers. However, Andrew and Hersh provide little evidence to back up their claims.12 In contrast, those who praise attachés, such as Bruce Bidwell, Henry Howe Ransom, and former government officials, argue that U.S. attachés were invaluable to the U.S. intelligence collection effort. In his work, a recently declassified study written for the Army in the late 1950s, Bidwell contends that attachés, through their reports, profoundly influenced current American military thought, especially in the accurate interpretation of actions of foreign militaries.13 Ransom claims that attaché reports were the most reliable and accurate of all information gathered by the U.S. intelligence community in the late 1950s, surpassing even that of aerial reconnaissance. Former highranking intelligence officers such as Allen Dulles and Lyman Kirkpatrick praise attaché performance, seeing them as a vital link in the gathering of intelligence on foreign adversaries. Nevertheless, the conclusions of Bidwell, Ransom, Kirkpatrick, and Dulles are equally unsatisfactory. Like Gleijeses, Wilson, and Hersh, they offer little to substantiate their conclusions. Bidwell’s reasoning, for instance, must be approached cautiously. Because the Army commissioned and sanctioned his work, he may have been tempted, and may have even been unconsciously motivated, to reach more favorable conclusions. This same line of reasoning applies to Dulles and Kirkpatrick, former highranking CIA officials who would have obvious biases in portraying their tenures and the performance of the U.S. intelligence community positively.14 The weakness of these authors’ statements regarding the performance and usefulness of attachés in the Cold War era is that they lack rigor. They draw general conclusions about these officers without systematically studying them. Such a study would presumably include interviews with a number of attaches and those with whom and for whom they worked, a complete examination of each attaché’s dispatch record, and a review of how attachés were trained and educated by the armed forces. By studying a number of different attaches, one could draw specific conclusions regarding attaché performance that would be firmly grounded in the historical record. In a nutshell, this is the goal of this study—to come to a better understanding of attachés in the Cold War era through a systematic and thorough study. This book concentrates on the attaché experience in Latin America and in particular on three countries: Guatemala (1950–1954), Cuba (1952–1958), and Bolivia (1958–1964). These countries and snippets of time were selected for several reasons. First, at the time this research was being conducted, a great majority of attachés who served in these countries were still living and agreed to extensive interviews. Second, interesting events were transpiring in each country; all were experiencing revolutionary change that would result in a turnover in government, two by golpe de estado (Guatemala and Bolivia) and one by a popular revolution (Cuba). Third, the militaries in each of these countries played a central role in the changes that transpired—attachés were

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Observing Our Hermanos de Armas

critical in the reporting of the military’s role in society and politics. Fourth, by 1998 each of these countries had been treated extensively in the secondary literature. The quality of this literature is high and the excellent work of various authors makes it much easier to judge the accuracy of the attachés’ reports. Despite some differences in opinion between authors, there is a general consensus on the important events that transpired in each of the countries, both in general and military terms. By comparing the actual attaché dispatches to the historical record, this study hopes to come to a reasoned judgment about attaché performance during the 1950s and early 1960s.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS: METHODOLOGY AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

The goal of the study is to judge if attaché reports were accurate, credible, and of practical use to Washington. In addition, this study seeks to determine whether these reports, once they reached Washington, had an impact on policy. In this study, an analytical framework formulated by I.B.Holley Jr., who proposed a two-tiered model for studying the formulation of military doctrine, is used. His model is also useful in analyzing intelligence questions.15 The first tier of his model addresses the collection-end of the intelligence process. Holley points out that organizations for decision-making function best when they have access to “information systematically, objectively, and continuously accumulated by responsible and effective organizations especially created to gather data.”16 In this study, the U.S. military attaché system is the intelligence counterpart, or Tier I of Holley’s organization for information. The reports attachés compiled and sent to Washington are the most important evidence of military perceptions about Latin American armed forces. They are also an indicator of each attaché’s training and ability. The selection, backgrounds, personalities, and preparation of these attachés indicate how capable they were to gather information effectively. Holley’s model would predict that if an attaché had inadequate training or ability, the result would be the sending of inaccurate intelligence to the “consumer”—the particular agencies in Washington that requested intelligence from the attaché. Tier II of Holley’s model addresses the utilization-end of the intelligence process. Even if attaché reports were accurate and comprehensive, they would be of little use if the Pentagon, State Department, and other agencies that organized, analyzed, and disseminated attaché reports (Tier II of Holley’s model) were inadequate. These Tier II agencies depended on smart and welltrained intelligence personnel. An expert analyst could spot important attaché intelligence and forward it to the appropriate decision-making level. Conversely, an untrained analyst could possibly overlook important intelligence with the resulting detrimental consequences. Applying Holley’s schema helps to understand what happened to attaché reports when they

Introduction

7

reached the Pentagon and the State Department—that is, how effectively did organizations make use of attaché dispatches in the formulation of foreign policy. Agencies that failed to recognize good intelligence were as culpable as the attaché who failed to provide accurate or timely intelligence. Holley would argue both Tier I and Tier II have to be strong in order to have an effective intelligence decision-making system, for each is dependent on the other for success.

METHODOLOGY—TIER I

This book examines the specific question: to what degree did U.S. military attachés correctly observe and how well did they assess specific trends in selected countries in Latin America? Chapters three, four, and five will focus on specific trends or events in Guatemala, Cuba, and Bolivia.17 How the attachés detected and reacted to significant phenomena in each country will provide a framework for judging the effectiveness of their work.18 Each chapter will describe events based on the historical consensus of the secondary literature—events to which attachés should have been attuned. Next, each section will examine how the attachés actually reported a trend or event by citing the attaché dispatches from Department of Defense and State Department Record Groups located at the National Archives II. In each situation, this study will evaluate how aware the attaché was of the specific event or trend. Each chapter will assess why the attaché succeeded or failed to depict the event accurately. This book will examine both the attaché’s reporting on important individual events and his ability to discern long-term trends in each country. To evaluate the former, this study will analyze attaché dispatches of a specific event or trend. Long-term trends will require making sense of a greater number of cables (about thirty to forty over a one to two year period). This study favors this dual approach of evaluating each attaché. Examining attaché reporting over time mitigates factors outside the attaché’s control (such as sickness), which may have prevented him from reporting accurately on a specific incident. By looking at both short and long-term performance utilizing the above framework, this study will draw conclusions and assess each attaché’s performance.

METHODOLOGY—TIER II

Richard Betts, a scholar specializing in strategic surprise, notes that optimal decisions in defense policy depend on the use of strategic intelligence: the acquisition, analysis, and appreciation of relevant data. The basic task in using intelligence to develop policy is to estimate the intentions of states over a period

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Observing Our Hermanos de Armas

of several years.19 If particular events are not estimated accurately (Tier I) or if accurate estimates are disregarded or conversely inaccurate estimates considered important (Tier II), a country’s ability to assess an event is flawed. To address the second tier of Holley’s model, it will be necessary to use a number of different sources. The first question is to determine if attaché intelligence drew the attention of officials in either the Pentagon or the State Department or conversely was ignored. In the case of Army policymakers at the Pentagon, for example, the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (G–2) determined which attaché dispatches top military leaders would see. The G– 2 would bundle these reports to the chief of staff in the form of daily or weekly intelligence digests. These digests served as a reference for policy formulation within the Pentagon. Sources other than military digests for Tier II include U.S. State Department inter-office memoranda, which were the counterparts of the Army daily or weekly intelligence briefs, and oral interviews with attachés conducted for this study. These interviews document recollections attachés had of formal and informal conversations with Washington policymakers not found in official memoranda. The next step is to determine whether or not particular attaché reports were used in the formulation of presidential policy. In other words, did the Pentagon and the State Department use information contained in attaché reports to advise the president? There are several avenues to track this influence. These include the National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs),20 National Security Council (NSC) policy papers and staff meetings, formal and informal recorded conversations with the president and other high-ranking executives, and personal memoirs. For each country, this book will examine daily and weekly military intelligence reports (five years for Guatemala, 1950–1954, five years for Cuba, 1954–1958 and five years for Bolivia 1960–1964) and declassified State Department interoffice memoranda, NIEs, NSC conversations, and memoirs. In sum, the goal of this inquiry is to document evidence of attaché influence. This will include tracing these officers’ reports from their source through each department’s bureaucracy (State or Defense) to its eventual inclusion in the NIE, NSC memoranda, and other presidential decision-making documents. This study will also document, through interviews conducted for this study, cases where attachés had contact with policymakers at various levels in Washington.

CHAPTER OUTLINES

Chapter One, “The Attaché Corps in the Pre-Cold War Era, 1888–1945,” traces the history of the U.S. attaché corps from its beginnings in 1885 to World War II. At that time the corps was small and assigned to select countries of “strategic importance.” For the most part, these attachés reported on strictly military subjects. Furthermore, this section profiles some of the most important attachés of this period. To a great extent, this chapter relies on National Archives

Introduction

9

Record Group (RG) 165.4, Records of the Military Intelligence Division (MID, G–2). RG 165 contains the reports that attaches sent to Washington. This record group is well maintained and indexed according to country and subject. In addition, there are several excellent studies of the attaché corps and the MID in the pre-World War II period, including a monograph on attaches from 1885–1919 by John Votaw, a work on U.S. Army attaches reports and the resurgence of the German Army 1933–1941 by Scott Koch, a study on U.S. intelligence and foreign military innovation from 1918–1941 by Thomas Mahnken, and a history of the MID to 1945 by Bruce Bidwell. Chapter Two, “The Attachés, Their Duties, Responsibilities, Education, Training, and Attitudes, 1945–1964,” examines the attaché corps from the Truman through the Johnson administrations. After World War II, the U.S. emphasized attaché training in part because of the elevation of the country to a superpower. The U.S. made its presence felt in Latin America by the signing of mutual defense agreements. In turn, military representation abroad increased with the posting of attachés to every Latin American capital. With the increased emphasis on intelligence gathering, the Pentagon built a robust education system to train attachés. This chapter looks in depth at the selection and training of attachés and ferrets out their qualifications to serve overseas—their language fluency and knowledge of history and politics. It also explores the attitudes of the U.S. Army towards the attaché corps and how much time, effort, and resources were invested in their “overseas ambassadors.” In addition, this chapter places the attaches in the context of the larger community of U.S. intelligence gatherers. It lays out the attaché’s duties and responsibilities to his embassy and superiors at the Pentagon. The chapter also shows how attaché dispatches made their way through the multitude of channels to policymakers in Washington. For sources, this chapter relies on the organizational historical libraries of the various locations where attaches prepared for their overseas assignments. Especially important is the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which assumed control of all attaché training in 1961 and kept records on how attachés were trained and educated in the post-World War II period. Other locations which will be helpful are the Defense Language Institute (DLI), the State Department (as attaches also received some training there on diplomatic subjects), the Command and General Staff College (CGSC), and the U.S. Army War College (AWC). All of these libraries have extensive resources that include textbooks and curricula from the period. Important sources also include individual interviews with attachés, and research papers from former attaches attending senior level war colleges. Many of these officers candidly appraised their selection and training. To understand how the attaché fit into the workings of the intelligence community, this study relies on official declassified documents from the DIA, U.S. Army and Air Force record groups, personal interviews, and secondary sources on intelligence published in the last twenty years.

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Observing Our Hermanos de Armas

Chapter Three, “U.S. Attachés, Guatemala, and the Overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz, 1950–10–1954,” looks at the events that led to the golpe against the Guatemalan president. PBSUCCESS, the CIA code word for U.S. covert action in Guatemala, was the first known Cold War intervention by the United States in Latin America. Convinced that the country’s president was a communist, President Dwight Eisenhower directed the CIA to organize an exile invasion commanded by a former Guatemalan Army colonel, Carlos Castillo Armas. A rebel column of a few hundred men was assembled across the border in Honduras, and equipped, directed, and prepared for the invasion by the CIA. Piero Gleijeses, author of Shattered Hope, has observed that PBSUCCESS was based on one premise: that opposition to the coup by the Guatemalan Army would be fatal to the operation.21 The ability of U.S. military attachés to determine whether the Guatemalan military would support Arbenz against the invasion was crucial to the success of the operation. If the army opposed Castillo Armas, the CIA operation would fail. The U.S. embassy directed the attaches to report on the Guatemalan military’s attitudes toward Arbenz and to pressure selected military officers not to oppose the operation. This chapter examines how well the attaches carried out these instructions as well as how well they reported on various trends in Guatemala. This chapter, following the methodology mentioned earlier, evaluates the perceptiveness of attaché reporting in Guatemala. More specifically, this chapter focuses on the combat capabilities of the Guatemalan armed forces and the impact of the U.S. military embargo, the military’s reaction to Arbenz’s agrarian reform initiatives, and the attaché’s ability to establish close contacts with military officers in Arbenz’s inner circle. How attachés detected and reacted to these phenomena provides a framework for judging the effectiveness of their work in general. In addition, this chapter also looks at Tier II of Holley’s model— determining whether policymakers in the Pentagon, State Department, or the White House used the information attachés provided to reach policy decisions regarding Arbenz. By looking at Tier I and Tier II factors this chapter judges not only the attaché’s awareness of the Guatemalan military but also whether policymakers in Washington utilized these reports effectively. To address the first tier of Holley’s model, I use the sampling techniques as outlined earlier in the methodology section. I examine RG 319—Records of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, RG 341—Records of Headquarters United States Air Force (Air Staff), and RGs 59 and 84–General Records of the Department of State and Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State at the National Archives II. These reports consist of attaché dispatches from Guatemala on the military, social, and political aspects of the Guatemalan military as well as evaluation reports and tasking letters from the U.S. Army and Air Force G–2. To address Holley’s second tier, I focus on daily and weekly military intelligence briefs from 1950–1954 (RGs 319 and 341), State Department Interoffice Memoranda (Guatemala File), the Foreign Relations Series of the United States (FRUS), and the Declassified Document Quarterly Series (DDQS).

Introduction

11

In addition to primary documents, research on Guatemala also includes a great deal of secondary literature to evaluate attaché reporting, especially the works of Piero Gleijeses’ Shattered Hope, Richard Immerman’s The CIA in Guatemala, Schlesinger and Kinzer’s Bitter Fruit, Jim Handy’s Revolution in the Countryside, and Zachary Karabell’s Architects of Intervention.22 This chapter, as well as the chapters on Cuba and Bolivia, rely on interviews conducted with various U.S. attachés and foreign service officers. Both attachés profiled in this chapter, Colonel Aloysius McCormick and Major Manuel Chavez, also agreed to extensive interviews. Chapter Four, “U.S. Attachés and the Cuban Revolution, 1954–14–1959,” explores the attaché’s role in Cuba during the second Batistato.23 This chapter focuses on the accuracy of attaché dispatches on the military capabilities of Batista’s army during the 1950s. I use similar methodology as the Guatemala chapter and measure the awareness attaches had of the trends historians give as reasons why the Cuban Army failed against Castro. Examining whether or not attachés reported on senior officer incompetence, the impact of junior officer purges, the unpreparedness for guerrilla warfare, and the psychological effects of the U.S. embargo will measure how accurately attachés reported to their superiors in Washington—Tier I of Holley’s model. Questions of attaché reporting on army effectiveness are also important because theoretically, if President Eisenhower had been given sufficient warning of Batista’s military weakness, a policy might have been implemented to support alternatives to the dictator. A great deal of secondary literature on Cuba in the 1950s and a fair amount analyzing the Cuban military exists. Chief among the latter is Louis Pérez’s Army Politics in Cuba, Rafael Fermoselle’s The Evolution of the Cuban Military, Bonachea and San Martín’s The Cuban Insurrection, and Thomas Paterson’s Contesting Castro.24 Like the Guatemalan chapter, this chapter relies on extensive interviews with attaches, foreign service officers, and close family of deceased attachés. This is supplemented by interviews with a number of former officers from Batista’s army who agreed to reflect on their perceptions of U.S. attachés. Chapter Five, “U.S. Attachés and the Bolivian MNR, 1958–1964,” provides a case study of a country that became a centerpiece for President John F.Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress. The president and his brother Robert became intimately involved in the planning and sending of qualified people to Latin America. The section spans the time period from the Eisenhower through the Kennedy administrations and into the first years of Lyndon Johnson’s tenure. Like the previous chapters, this chapter examines attachés’ awareness of several trends essential in understanding the military antecedents that led to the Bolivian coup in 1964. These trends include the ways attaches measured the combat capabilities of the various military forces in Bolivia, the influence attaches had on the U.S. decision to back the military as a stabilizing influence, and the ways attachés chronicled the rebuilding of the military and understood

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and reported on the increasing role of the military in Bolivian politics. Finally, this chapter explores the relationship between air attaché Lieutenant Colonel Edward Fox and General René Barrientos and the role the attaché played in the events culminating in the November 1964 coup. This chapter follows the same sampling techniques and methodology outlined in the earlier chapters. The source material is similar to the other case studies—RGs 59, 84, 319, 341, and DIA archival material (Tier I), FRUS, DDQS, and State Department interoffice memoranda (Tier II), and personal interviews with officers from both the U.S. and Bolivian militaries. This chapter also uses extensive secondary literature from respected scholars of Bolivia.25 The “Conclusions” chapter evaluates the system of training, tasking, and reporting used by selected attachés and determines how well their intelligence was utilized. Another goal of the chapter is to reach some general conclusions on the implications of this study for the attaché system and the larger U.S. intelligence community. While it is not within the scope of this book to summarize all the changes in attaché training since 1964, this study summarizes the changes that have already taken place in recent years and recommends possible changes for the future.

CHAPTER ONE

The Attaché Corps in the Pre-Cold War Era, 1888–1945

Before the U.S. Civil War, the War Department saw little reason to collect intelligence on foreign armies. Americans believed that their distance from Europe and the Far East mitigated the possibility of war. Sending an expeditionary force to these areas would have been inconceivable to the public in the nineteenth century. Occasionally, individual officers traveled abroad to observe wars or foreign military maneuvers, but these missions were temporary and short-lived. Immediately after the war, officers came home and reported their information to their superiors and then went back to their former duties.1 In addition to officially sponsored observer missions, U.S. officers observed foreign armies and military facilities while on vacation. Termed “hunting and fishing” leave, these sojourns (presumably done without the knowledge of the visiting country) were not considered official leave unless the officer returned and submitted a complete report on that country’s military to officials in Washington. Naturally, this rule encouraged officers to travel and provided the Army with a steady stream of intelligence on foreign militaries.2 These ad hoc arrangements proved adequate in the early to mid-1800s when technological advances in weaponry were incremental. Because most western armies were at the same level of military technology, the War Department saw little need to have an officer stationed overseas when occasional official observers or vacationing officers could report back and changes could be implemented.3 After the U.S. Civil War, a revolution in military technology occurred. The development of breech-loading cannon and exploding shells during the 1870s and 1880s spelled the end of wooden navies and fueled the development of armor plated ships and subsequently, shells which could penetrate the other navies’ armor.4 The technological changes that affected naval armaments soon influenced armies as well. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71, a watershed in the advancement of modern armaments and training, saw the introduction 13

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of the exploding shrapnel shell, breech loading artillery, infantry rifles, railroad networks for the rapid mobilization and initial deployment of armies, and a thorough reorganization of officer education—including the formation of a general staff. The military balance between states, which previously evolved over years, could now change in weeks. It became essential to have trained military attachés permanently stationed in foreign capitals to report back to their superiors on the latest military developments.5 As result, in September 1888 the War Department persuaded the U.S. Congress to approve appropriations for a regular attaché corps. Less than a year later, the Army assigned the first attachés to legations in London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and St. Petersburg with instructions to: Examine into and report upon all matters of a military or technical character that may be of interest and value to any branch of the War Department and to the service at large. Keep informed through the legation, public press, and such other channels as your official position may secure for you from foreign governments… Examine the military libraries, bookstores, and publishers’ lists in order to give early notice of any new or important publications or inventions or improvements in arms.6

Attachés, however, were not spies; they would obtain intelligence on enemy armies through overt means and open sources. The War Department’s selection of Germany, France, Russia, Austria, and Great Britain as posts for their first attaches was not surprising. U.S. officials recognized that most military advances would originate from Europe and saw the United States as woefully behind the European powers. A leading Army thinker after observing the Franco-Prussian War noted: When Germany fought France she put her army on a war footing in eight days, and in eight more she had four hundred thousand men on French territory. [During the Civil War] it took us from April 1861 to March 1862 to form an army of the same size.7

Stationing an attaché at these legations would enable the U.S. Army to devise plans to keep up with the rapidly advancing European states. After the initial posting of officers to the first five European countries in 1889, the Military Intelligence Division (MID) decided to expand representation in Europe and Asia to Italy (1890), Belgium (1892), Spain (1893), Japan (1894), and China (1900). The move to open posts in the Far East stemmed from the rising naval and military power of Japan, which would culminate in the 1904–5 defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.8 In the 1890s, the War Department also started adding military attachés to legations and embassies in Latin America. Shortly before the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, military attaches were assigned to Mexico, Central

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America (at large), Brazil, Cuba, Peru, and Venezuela. The assigning of attachés to Latin America was not surprising because at the time the United States was in the process of expanding its commercial and maritime ties there. The last decade of the nineteenth century witnessed an American economic and military expansion that brought many new people under American purview.9 Attachés assigned to Latin America faced different challenges than those assigned to Europe. Major Arthur L.Wagner, Assistant Adjutant General of MID in 1898, put it this way: Our attachés in Europe are charged mainly with reporting upon military developments and progress, with a view to our own military instruction. Those in the American Republics are charged mainly with gathering information in regard to geography, the resources, the military strength, and the development of nations with whom our national policy is likely to cause us to form an alliance, or against whom we may be called upon to declare war.10

To Wagner and his superiors at MID, the U.S. had little to learn from “backward” Latin American militaries. Instead of obtaining military information, attaches would gather all necessary data for a possible invasion—in line with the increasing hegemonic power of the U.S. in the hemisphere. Because MID did not view a Latin American assignment as complex or difficult as a European one, they believed that one attaché could cover Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and the Central American states. A second officer could be assigned to Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. A third could report from Chile, Bolivia, and Peru. In contrast, the Berlin embassy between 1892 and 1910 had one attaché and two assistants reporting to the War Department.11 Despite the low priority Latin America had for policymakers and MID, several major conflicts and diplomatic initiatives between 1898 and 1904 underscored the importance of Latin American attachés. Three examples of attaché reporting contrast their work with that of their European counterparts. On one special mission two attachés reported on Colombia prior to Panama’s independence. In March 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt sent two army officers, Captain Chauncey B.Humphrey and 2nd Lieutenant Grayson M.P.Murphy, on a secret intelligence-gathering mission to Colombia. The two officers traveled first to Venezuela, where the U.S. embassy there placed them on duty as attachés, and then proceeded to the Panamanian area of Colombia. They arrived in Panama in July 1903, accomplished their mission, of which little is known, and were back in the White House seven months later giving President Roosevelt a confidential briefing. The Panamanian revolution took place less than three weeks later. Panamanian

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independence proved the necessary precursor to the building of the Panama Canal.12 Another example in the days leading up to the Spanish-American war were the reports of Captain George P.Scriven, who served as the military attaché to Cuba and Mexico in 1898. His attaché reports, along with those of Captain Tasker H.Bliss in Madrid, provided important details on Cuban resources and geography and Spanish preparations for war.13 In a post-war assessment of intelligence reporting during the conflict, the War Department lauded the attaches’ performance. Particularly noteworthy for recognition in their opinion was Scriven’s reporting that: not only presented a general description of Cuban resources and physical characteristics but also an explanation of the railway system with accompanying maps; a discussion of current military conditions throughout the island to include armed strength and the location of defensive works; special details covering the city of Havana and immediate environs; important road data derived from personal reconnaissance; and valuable notes relating to group attitudes of various inhabitants.14

Scriven’s dispatches enabled MID to publish a comprehensive pamphlet entitled “Military Notes on Cuba,” which was given to every officer in the Army prior to the Spanish-American War. Attaché reports in Haiti also reflected Washington’s concern about possible hemispheric intervention. The first African-American attaché, Captain Charles Young, reported on conditions in Haiti which gave U.S. military planners more complete information for possible future contingencies. Assigned to Haiti in 1904, Young was asked by MID to report on the military and geography of that island nation. Like his fellow attaches Humphrey, Murphy, and Whitehead, Young reported on subjects which would aid the U.S. in case of intervention.15 Young accomplished his mission. He wrote detailed reports on all aspects of the country, government, customs, and armed forces. The U.S. Marines consequently relied on Young’s reports during their invasion in 1915 and 1916. Marine General Smedley Butler in particular found the information on Haiti in the War Department files invaluable for planning an invasion of that country.16 In the same period that attachés assigned to Latin America were reporting intelligence for possible U.S. action, attachés continued to observe military innovations in the Far East and Europe. The U.S. was eager to observe the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 because it was hoped that the conflict would resolve perplexing and as yet unresolved problems of applying modern weapons to battlefield tactics.17 Moreover, the war provided an excellent opportunity for not only the United States but also European powers in general to prove or disprove many of the tactical and strategic theories developed

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after 1871. For the first time in the history of the attaché corps, attachés were able to observe a war fought by industrialized nations. The Russians and Japanese used machine guns and rapid-fire artillery and wrestled with developing the best tactics and methods to employ these weapons. Because of these issues, the conflict attracted not only American attachés but also many foreign observers.18 The attachés and observers assigned to cover this war were of high caliber. John Greenwood, who has written the most exhaustive account of the American attachés, noted that their reports from the front reflected an exceedingly high level of military expertise and indicated that these officers were intimately acquainted with the most recent developments in European military thought and doctrine as well as modern military technology. The Army saw the war as an opportunity to give promising young officers a chance to witness combat conditions. Some of these officers would subsequently rise to the highest ranks of the U.S. Army. Captains Payton C.March and John J. Pershing, and Lieutenant Douglas MacArthur each became Chief of Staff of the Army and of the three, Pershing and MacArthur would lead American forces in World War I and II, respectively.19 Many, including Army Chief of Staff General Adna R.Chaffee, praised March, MacArthur, and Pershing for their work and underscored the value of sending such observers. In his annual report for 1905, Army Chief of Staff General Adna R.Chaffee pointed out that the reports of the military observers in Manchuria underscored: the wisdom of sending them to observe operations in what has proven to be one of the most extensive of modern wars, and one in which many new ideas have been developed.20

Like the attachés and temporary observers assigned to the Russo-Japanese war, the War Department leaned heavily on attaché reports during the initial stages of World War I when America declared its neutrality but continued to make preparations for war. As war erupted in Europe in August 1914, fifteen attachés were serving in nineteen embassies worldwide, mostly in Europe. Military attachés during World War I provided information on the worsening conflict in Europe. From August 1914 until the entry of the United States in April 1917, the United States had the unique opportunity to observe both the Central Powers and the Allies. Attachés and other observers provided detailed reports from France, Britain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Turkey. These reports gave the War Department a picture of how the war was being waged, the tactics being used, and the relative strengths of each of the armies. The hope was that the military attachés and observers could shorten the “learning curve” in many areas of military knowledge for U.S. military planners.21 Army attaché dispatches from Russia illustrate the type of reporting which helped the United States prepare for war. Lieutenant Sherman Miles, attaché

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to that country from 1914–1915, observed battles on the Russian Eastern front. He reported to the War Department on the Russian infantry, tactical methods, supply, and transport. Of special interest to the planners in Washington was the information gathered on winter clothing, especially eye protection against snow, the types of oils used to make footgear waterproof, and the general effects of having wet feet for days.22 Colonel Bentley T.Mott’s reports from Italy after the U.S. entry into the war also demonstrate the type of reporting the War Department wanted. Mott arrived in Italy in November 1917. After observing the Italian Army he concluded that it was the “most inefficient of fighting machines.” The soldiers were not only poorly led but also did not know how to fight. The Italian infantryman was “patient, obedient, hardy, and asked for little food or clothing.” Mott had nothing but derision for Italian officers who were “ignorant and knew nothing of staff work.” Reports such as these gave planners a good picture of the strength of possible allies should the U.S. enter the war.23 Other examples of attaché reporting included Captain William A. Castle’s reports in 1913 and 1914 on machine gun employment and Colonel Joseph E.Kuhn’s dispatches on German forays against the Russians.24 After the war, the U.S. rapidly reduced the number of attaches. Some posts were closed; others were reduced in size or consolidated. This change reflected the increasing isolationist mood in the United States.25 The reduction in the number of attachés also reflected the decreased army expenditures of the 1920 and 1930s. Russell Weigley describes the America of the 1920s and 1930s as “dedicated not only to the dream that wars had ended forever, but even more strongly to the more prosaic fetish of economy of government.”26 Three years after the end of the war, Congress reduced the size of the army to 150,000 from a wartime high of over 2.7 million. The next year brought a further reduction of 20,000 men followed in 1927 by a cut to 118,000.27 For the most part, the early 1930s saw further decreases. The initial reaction of the government to the Great Depression was to curtail expenditures. In noting the precipitous drop in the size of the army, Chief of Staff of the Army General Peyton March caustically commented that the United States on its own initiative had “rendered itself more impotent than Germany under the military limitations of the Treaty of Versailles.”28 Much of the history of the attaché corps in the 1920s and early 1930s involved efforts by the Army to convince Congress to retain the attaché corps. The congressional liaison officer in charge of U.S. military attaches, Major H.W.T.Eglin, wrote several entries in the Congressional Digest, one of which noted that: The success of any organization or activity is dependent to no small degree upon information or methods employed by parallel organizations that exist for the same purpose. Consequently, it is sound business policy for a government to learn and exchange ideas with other governments on the subject of national defense. Military attachés attached to our embassies

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19

and legations, in addition to being the military advisers of the ambassador or minister, are specifically charged with the collection of information on the military situation in the countries to which they are accredited.29

The efforts of such men as Eglin may have helped to prevent the elimination of the corps, but their exertions did little to stem the reduction of appropriations for the attachés. During 1924 for instance, the monies allocated to the attaché corps totaled sixty-five thousand dollars, a significant reduction from the wartime high of over four hundred thousand dollars. By 1932, the 1924 budget would be cut in half yet again.30 This trend continued throughout the 1930s. Even with the 1932 reduction, Congress pressed for still more reductions. For example, Representative Ross A.Collins of Mississippi complained to Army officials during a budget hearing that MID provided automobiles to attachés to perform their intelligence work. He implied that if the attaché budget could include the luxury of automobiles, this was all the more reason to decrease their appropriation for the upcoming year.31 Aside from the automobile imbroglio, the decrease in funding limited efforts to obtain even essential materiel such as foreign military publications and maps. In 1936, the head of MID, Colonel Francis Lincoln, asked Congress for two hundred dollars per officer for these items. Although this sum was not nearly enough, Lincoln thought it better than nothing at all. Nonetheless, the request was denied.32 In addition to contending with financial austerity, the attaché corps suffered a reduction in personnel. By the mid-1920s the U.S. closed or left vacant twenty-two attaché posts worldwide, the great majority of which were in regions considered less strategically important, such as Latin America. In posts that did stay open, the congressional limit (thirty-two) on the number of attaches that could be sent abroad seriously impaired the Army’s ability to gather information. Fewer attaches had to cover more countries. Because some attaches could not devote their full efforts to one country, important events probably went unreported.33 In addition, the National Defense Act of 1920 subordinated the G–2 to other general staff members. The 1920 act (and its slight modification by General John Pershing in 1921) reorganized the War Department General Staff (WDGS) into five equal divisions: Personnel (G–1), Intelligence (G– 2/ MID), Operations and Training (G–3), Supply (G–4), and the War Plans Division. Each division was headed by an Assistant Chief of Staff—normally a general officer. Pershing’s organization (five) exceeded the number of generals authorized (four) under the act. Because there was no legal authorization for another general, one division had to be headed by a colonel. Pershing made the G–2 a colonel. Although MID was theoretically equal in importance to the other divisions, the assignment of a colonel reduced MID’s ability to jockey for the small amounts of money allocated to the Army during the austere 1920s and 1930s.34

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The reduction of the MID to second class status came at a inopportune time. The need for foreign intelligence was never greater than in the 1930s. The world was quickly becoming a more dangerous place. In January 1933 Adolph Hitler came to power. He was determined to avenge Germany’s losses during World War I and to realize his dream of Pan-Germanism. By 1935, Hitler was rearming Germany, building an air force and an army. In October 1935, the fascist Benito Mussolini, who had governed Italy since 1922, invaded Ethiopia, annexing the country after a short war. Encouraged by Mussolini’s success, Hitler in March 1936 ordered German troops into the Rhineland, the area bordering Belgium and France that the Versailles treaty had declared permanently demilitarized.35 Spain and China were other flash-points. Nationalist soldiers under General Francisco Franco started the Spanish Civil War in July 1936 by attacking the loyalist Republican government in Madrid. Eager to support their fellow fascist, Hitler and Mussolini sent military equipment and troops to support Franco. In the Far East, the Japanese invaded China in July 1937 and tightened their grip during the ensuing years.36 The need for adequate intelligence on these powers as well as on potential counterweights such as Russia became essential. Attaches serving in Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo filed reports until the United States entered World War II in December 1941. American officers watched the Italians consolidate their rule in Ethiopia, Hitler rearm Germany, and the Japanese incorporate parts of China into its East Asia “Co-Prosperity Sphere.” These attaches, like their predecessors, wrote thousands of reports. In Russia, the U.S. attaches reported on complex changes. Because the Soviet Union during the 1930s was growing both economically and militarily, these changes had important ramifications for the United States—both economic and military. Attachés assigned to Russia faced many challenges.37 The Soviet government severely limited foreign attachés’ ability to collect intelligence. The U.S. attaché to Moscow, Major Thomas Dresser White, observed that he could only obtain photographs through “official Soviet propaganda agencies.” Such restrictions prompted him to remark that he would rather go through life without a camera than be subject to the annoyance and suspicion that always went with picture taking. The Soviet government also used calculated inaction to limit his effectiveness. By refusing to respond to requests to visit military facilities or obtain publications on the Red Army, the Soviets limited his initiative and exposure to vital information. Attaches from other countries had similar difficulties. According to White, “most other attaches say all they do is read newspapers.”38 Possibly the most frustrating aspect of the Kremlin’s efforts to control intelligence was the restriction on Soviet personnel interacting with foreigners. Although White reported that he never could find a specific regulation forbidding Soviet officers from having personal relations with foreign officers, he did note that no official—or even a member of his family—had ever called on him. He in turn was not allowed to visit Soviet officers, “except at their offices.”39

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Despite these obstacles, David Glantz, who has analyzed White’s attaché reports, concludes that U.S. Army attaches were remarkably effective sources of information. Attaches reported on the development of Soviet operational and tactical theory, the implementation of the Soviet motor-mechanization program, and the nature and impact of the Stalinist military purges. In Glantz’s estimation this was a remarkable achievement given the restrictive environment under which they worked.40 Attachés, who faced fewer restrictions in Germany, were more successful in ferreting out military innovations. During the 1930s, they provided MID with over a thousand reports on German rearmament and military expansion. Their reports were very accurate, especially regarding mobilization figures, tables of organization, and equipment types. German Army officers were especially candid with U.S. and British attachés. The British attaché in Berlin, Major Kenneth Strong, was continually astonished at the indiscretions of his German counterparts who in the course of an evening would: discuss the sort of super-secret information about Germany and its armed forces which we found invaluable. I sometimes questioned them as to why they did this and the reply I got was that at all costs war must be avoided; another war would mean disaster for Germany. One of them confided to me that without rearmament he would have remained a doorto-door salesman of washing machines, whereas now he had a large official car at his disposal and an assured position. If the war came Germany would be beaten and he would once again be selling his washing machines with much less success. They in no way considered the disclosure of this information as disloyalty to their own country. They used to say to me that if we would put one British division in France and keep it there it would show that we were alive to the dangers of the situation.41

In contrast to the attaches in Moscow, the attaches in Berlin were able to draw from a diverse set of sources for their reports. The historical consensus is that the attaches did an excellent job reporting on the military preparations not only in Berlin and Moscow but also in Tokyo and other foreign capitals before the American entry into the war.42

THE ISSUE OF POLITICAL-MILITARY VERSUS MILITARY REPORTING

Attachés who served in Latin America during the 1950s and 1960s reported primarily on political-military affairs, especially in countries where the military held sway. Interestingly, attachés who served worldwide before the Cold War were discouraged or even disciplined for filing such dispatches. The writers of the 1888 attaché mission statement emphasized that attachés should concentrate on military armament and training innovation—a clear message

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to avoid political matters.43 Colonel George T.Langhorn’s censure because of his political-military reporting is but one example of how seriously the War Department discouraged this type of reporting. Langhorn served as attaché to Berlin from 1913 to 1915. The pro-German tone of his dispatches prompted the Secretary of War to advise him in 1915 to confine his efforts to military questions alone and not to report on matters that pertained to the State Department. Langhorn persisted in his political reporting and was subsequently removed from his attaché post and censured for “use of unnatural expressions in official dispatches.” The censure report added: A military attaché is not, at least under the general conception of his duties, a political agent of his government in the sense that he should consider himself its adviser in the field of world politics, and in assuming so to advise, without special instructions, a military attaché trespasses upon the functions of the ambassador with whom he is accredited as attaché.44

The subject of political-military reporting continued to surface in the 1930s. Concerned that attachés did not confine themselves to military matters, Army Chief of Staff General Malin Craig asked the head of MID, Colonel Lincoln, if attachés concentrated on political at the expense of military matters and “whether it was feasible if political matters could be eliminated from the reports.” Craig felt that the army could get political information from the State Department and embassy staffs rather than from the attachés.45 Lincoln’s reply was one of the first known defenses of political reporting. While Lincoln did not convince Malin and others of the need for political reporting, his response formed the basis of a rationale for accepting this practice in the post-war period. Lincoln replied to Craig’s memo using several lines of reasoning. On the accuracy of attaché versus press dispatches, Lincoln observed that most press reports came from official government sources, which often omitted key facts, diminishing their usefulness. Because he was in the country, the attaché would be able to supplement press reports. As an illustration, Lincoln noted that press reports during the Italo-Ethiopian war were inadequate and that attaché reports were the only accurate record of the conditions of the war.46 On Craig’s second point, Lincoln noted that the attaché concentrated on military matters, but could not exclude political affairs. The types of reports attachés filed—dominated by either military or political coverage—often depended on the attaché’s host country. Attachés in countries with unstable governments that relied on the military had to, by definition, focus on the civil-military relationship. In contrast, Lincoln noted, attachés in countries with relatively stable governments could emphasize military concerns. Lincoln gave Germany as an example of a nation where attaches could concentrate on military issues. Of the reports he had received in the last six months of 1936, Lincoln pointed out that approximately ninety

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percent dealt with strictly military matters and the remainder a combination of military and political. Lincoln also noted that even in countries where civil-military relations were unstable, the importance of having a military attaché interpret the politics of his country gave MID a different perspective. While well qualified to report on a country, State Department representatives lacked the training to understand the relationship between politics and the military that the attaché was much more qualified to analyze.47 It is unclear whether Lincoln’s memo changed Craig’s mind. Nevertheless, Craig’s concern and Lincoln’s response show the tension that existed between those who felt that the attaches should confine their reporting to military matters and those who wanted the attachés to submit political and military dispatches. In the pre-World War II period, the usual message to the attaches from senior officers was an injunction to confine their efforts to the military realm. The transformation of the United States into a world superpower and the expansion of the attaché corps to countries that had hitherto not had military representatives changed the reporting paradigm to reflect Lincoln’s contentions.

TRAINING AND SELECTION

In the early years of the attaché corps, the War Department selected attaches who were independently wealthy.48 Attachés needed to have income in addition to their army salaries. Especially in Europe, the attaché’s life revolved around social gatherings where information was exchanged and contacts made. Teas, dinners, and balls were expensive and occupied the attaché’s time. In the early 1900s, attaches received one hundred dollars per month for entertainment expenses, not nearly enough when their European counterparts were given many times this amount. Attachés had to have money to do their job effectively. Officers without outside income often turned down attaché positions. For example, in 1902 the Adjutant General of the Army (the person responsible for assigning officers to the corps) offered Captain John Bigelow a post as military attaché to Russia. Bigelow declined because of the expense involved. There are many such examples in the early years of the attaché corps.49 Even if officers did have the financial means to become attachés, they would sometimes need political connections to obtain overseas postings. The War Department chose some of their attachés by honoring requests by congressmen or ambassadors. For example, U.S. Senator Shelby M.Cullom of Illinois wrote the Acting Secretary of State, Francis M.Huntington Wilson, in 1912 recommending Lieutenant Albert Gilmore for an attaché post in Belgium or Switzerland. Cullom’s political friends in Chicago sought the posting for the officer.50 By the 1930s, political connections declined in importance, although the need for financial independence continued to be important. In a staff study written at the Army War College, the authors noted that outside income was

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almost mandatory because in many foreign countries an officer’s pay and expense allowance were inadequate.51 Truman Smith, the attaché to Germany in the mid-1930s, complained to MID regularly about the meager funds allocated for entertaining. He found the “party circuit” both emotionally and financially draining. In order to obtain important intelligence on the German military, Smith was forced to use his own money to hold various parties and receptions at the U.S. embassy, sometimes weekly. Aside from the entertainment expenses, MID refused to reimburse attaches for travel expenses outside the capital to view Germany’s latest military equipment. Indeed, conditions were so austere for attachés during that decade that Truman and his fellow attachés had to pool their money to pay for transportation to observe military maneuvers. Smith and his assistants eventually limited their travels outside of Berlin to essential military exercises.52 Despite the monetary sacrifices that officers such as Truman and his colleagues made, the fundamental selection criterion of outside income for attaché duty caused resentment among fellow U.S. officers. They saw the attaches as a sort of elite “country club” of rich officers with a restricted membership list. This perception caused problems each year when the subject of increasing appropriations, specifically expense accounts for the attachés, came before the Army staff or congressional appropriations committees. Antipathy toward increasing attaché budgets was especially strong among senior army officers of higher ranks who did not have a personal fortune.53 Officers’ resentment of attaché exclusiveness also proved a problem in recruiting. Because senior officers had the power to promote officers and because some harbored resentment towards attachés, few officers who sought high rank within the army became attachés—even if they had the means to do so. In testimony before the appropriations committee, the head of MID underscored the problem of attaché recruitment: The natural inclination of a soldier is to go with troops and remain with troops. The general officers, of course, wanted the best men, naturally, and should have had them; and we did not have a free field for the selection of personnel, and quite rightly. We did the best we could with the personnel and funds we had available.54

In addition to resentment of attaché exclusiveness, some general officers viewed the attachés’ mission skeptically. Such skepticism sometimes existed at the highest levels of command. In a memorandum written in late 1936, the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Malin Craig, implied that the Army could get more and faster information from newspapers and periodicals than it could from its attachés. The lack of a formal education program did little to enhance the credibility of attaché corps. MID claimed that attachés received intensive training before being sent overseas, were familiar with existing conditions at the new stations,

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and had a general knowledge of the information files. The reality was different. The Army saw little need to train officers thoroughly in attaché work before assigning them abroad. The official pronouncements seemed to contradict the general reality. Truman Smith in his autobiography Berlin Alert pointed out that his training by MID consisted of: a cursory and quite inadequate course of instruction on the duties of a military attaché. To be sure, I learned something about codes and military attaché finance, but naught else. The fortnight in Washington, however, was useful. I saw at first hand how inadequately organized, staffed, and financed the Military Intelligence Division was. It became clear to me also that Military Intelligence was the orphan branch of the General Staff and the Army as a whole and that military attaches lacked prestige and were little regarded or listened to.55

The military attaché to the Soviet Union in 1939,56 Major Ivan Yeaton, had a similar experience. He characterized the instruction as superficial and inadequate especially for gathering and reporting.57 MID required each newly appointed officer to report to Washington for a two-week orientation course prior to traveling to their country of assignment. Truman Smith’s meeting in 1935 with Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur was recalled in the memoirs of his wife, Katherine Smith, and reflects the reality of attaché briefings: I was shown in to General MacArthur. He was seated at his desk, his jacket of a loud rancous [sic] tweed, smoking a cigarette. He looked at me considering, waved me to a chair and began pacing the room back and forth as was his custom when considering a problem, smoking furiously. He stopped in front of me. I rose. ‘You are very young to be going to Berlin.’ ‘Yes, Sir.’ Pacing again. I sat down. He confronted me again. I rose. ‘You have no rank.’ ‘Yes, Sir.’ Pacing. Then he stopped once more and once more I rose. ‘Well Smith, I have only this to say to you. I have long noted when young officers go abroad they very soon end up in the British pocket. Now Smith, my advice to you is never go to bed with a corpse.’ He waved me away.58

That was the last advice Smith would receive before he traveled to Berlin to take up his post. *** Attachés from the 1880s through World War II reported primarily on advances in military technology, tactics, and techniques. Considering the fiscal austerity of the depression era, it is remarkable that attachés effectively reported on

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foreign military innovation. In Latin America, especially around the turn of the century, attachés provided vital information to the War Department. Political-military reporting for the most part was discouraged because senior military officers thought that military issues demanded the attaché’s full attention. This attitude changed during the Cold War when the United States felt less threatened in general with military innovation abroad (the exception being the Soviet Union). At that time, the U.S. also sent additional military attachés to countries whose militaries were more involved in political matters. Finally, it is clear that there was little or no training of attachés before their postings overseas. The War Department felt that attachés could observe military maneuvers, and drawing on their experience, determine what was important. This lack of training did not noticeably affect attaché reporting in the pre-World War II period because military maneuvers, strength reports, and readiness issues were fairly straightforward issues. The education and training system for attachés would become much more robust during the Cold War, when the U.S. emerged as a superpower with worldwide security concerns.

CHAPTER TWO

The Attachés, Their Duties, Responsibilities, Education, Training, and Attitudes, 1945–1964

Probably the most demanding military assignment relative to the execution of United States foreign policy objectives in the post-war period was that of the military attaché. Military attaches, “at the point” of U.S. political-military policy abroad, provided intelligence to multiple U.S. agencies which used this information in the formulation of foreign policy. As a collector of intelligence and a diplomatic representative, the attaché’s job proved complex. Nations whose military was heavily involved in politics required the attaché to report on military equipment, tactics, and techniques and also on the military’s political predilections. Some attachés were unable to cope with the demands.1 How well was the average attaché trained and educated to do this difficult job? What were his duties and responsibilities at the embassy? Who were his superiors and how was he asked to collect intelligence? How did he interact with the various intelligence collectors at the embassy, such as the CIA and the embassy’s political officers? Once the attaché sent his intelligence to his superiors in Washington, how was it processed and how might it reach the highest levels of government? The purpose here is to answer these questions and ones similar in order to understand the attaché’s role in the post war period and lay the foundation for subsequent chapters which explore individual attaches’ experiences in Guatemala, Cuba, and Bolivia. ***

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE MILITARY ATTACHÉ

According to the manuals that laid out the duties of attachés, it is clear that they had some of the more unique duties within the military. While the attaché was primarily an intelligence collector, those duties had to be balanced by his ability to work with his civilian counterparts in the embassy. Duties varied 27

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for each post depending on the country assignment. In one country ceremonial duties were paramount. In others observation and reporting were primary. According to Army regulations, the attaché duties and responsibilities were: To collect and report military information, to maintain good relations between the United States Army and Army officials of the country assigned, to further the interests of the Department of the Army in the country concerned, to provide military advice to the Chief of the Diplomatic Mission, and to represent the Secretary of the Army and Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, on Army matters.2

The attaché’s responsibilities could be broadly categorized into intelligence, representation, and membership on the country team. The collection of information was the primary duty of the attaché. Like pre-World War II attachés, they gathered their intelligence overtly.3 Attaches were not allowed to gather information covertly. If an attaché was caught gathering intelligence in this manner, the attaché might become persona non grata and be expelled from the country.4 Naturally, the success attachés had in gathering information depended on the relationship between the host country and the United States. Communist countries, for example, did not permit foreign attachés to observe military maneuvers, visit military bases, or travel freely. Because valuable military information was often not available in the press, the attaché had to piece together information obtained from his fellow service attachés or foreign allied attachés. The need likewise existed for assessing the strength of allies. In 1969, the Acting Director for the Defense Intelligence Agency (the organization which supervises attachés) acknowledged that while there might not be an immediate need for information on a country’s armed forces, a base of knowledge was crucial. “After all,” he noted, “a country which is friendly to us today may not be a year from now.”5 In spite of the DIA director’s official policy, an attaché’s intelligence duties were probably subordinate to his representative function in most allied countries. It was also quite a bit easier to gather intelligence on allied militaries. Among these nations, the exchange of information was often formalized in joint agreements.6 Obviously, accurate, up to date intelligence was essential in the execution of U.S. foreign policy. The former Inspector General of the CIA, Lyman Kirkpatrick, in a 1961 speech noted how intelligence was “absolutely essential” to national defense. Incorrect or inaccurate intelligence of the future direction of the army of those powers which have hostile intentions for this country could be such an important and decisive factor in our defense

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structure that we might be arming for the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.7

Like Kirkpatrick, the Pentagon, State Department, and others in Washington valued the timely information attachés provided on foreign militaries. In a 1955 staff study, the Army estimated that seventy-five percent of intelligence on foreign militaries came from attachés. A respected authority on intelligence matters in the 1950s and 1960s suggested that attaché reports were the most valuable pieces of intelligence, ranking higher than U.S. State Department reports, clandestine operations, secret sources, press, radio, and published documents.8 In addition to gathering intelligence, attachés also represented the Department of Defense. As outlined in Air Force Manual 36–1, the attaché: represents the Department of Defense and Air Force Chief of Staffs. Speaks and acts for the Chief of Staff (and other services if not a tri-service post) or defense agencies in matters of official interest. Attends official state and military functions as observer or participant as may be required in the performance of official duties. Acts as liaison officer for visiting U.S. fleet commands and military units.9

An attaché was expected to attend military ceremonies and embassy social affairs and greet and escort visiting U.S. dignitaries. For the latter, the attaché and his small administrative staff arranged transportation, lodging, and appointments with important military officers. If a U.S. Air Force squadron or ship arrived in country, the attaché would take care of local arrangements and have the commander or senior U.S. officer introduced to the host military.10 Many attachés interviewed for this book viewed the representative function as either a distraction or the most pleasant part of their assignment. Hard core intelligence gatherers felt that the endless ceremonies, cocktail parties, and the like were a waste of time and took away from the gathering of useful intelligence. As one attaché put it, “I never gained one useful iota of intelligence talking to my counterparts at an embassy party.”11 On the other hand, in allied countries such as Cuba, attaches thoroughly enjoyed the party atmosphere, seeing it as a break from years of hard duty in line units. They also considered cocktail parties to be important venues to obtain intelligence. The attachés’ third function was as a member of the country team. The attaché served as a member of the embassy staff under the ambassador who remained in charge of all embassy operations. According to U.S. Air Force regulations, the attaché: Advises the chief of the diplomatic mission on matters of military import such as military capabilities of the host government from the military point of view. Makes recommendations on treaties, international agreements, and politico-military plans, policies, and procedures.12

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The myriad organizations at a typical U.S. embassy often resulted in coordination problems. In an effort to affirm the ambassador’s jurisdiction, President Harry Truman initiated the team concept in 1951. In 1961, President Kennedy reaffirmed the ambassador’s primacy by executive order: You are in charge of the entire United States Diplomatic Mission, and I shall expect you to supervise all of its operations. The Mission includes not only the personnel of the Department of State and the Foreign Service, but also the representatives of all other United States agencies which have programs and activities.13

The number of personnel in American diplomatic missions during the 1950s or 1960s could vary from as little as six in some African countries to as many as several hundred in Vietnam during the height of that war. In addition to the ambassador and his executive, political, economic, consular, and administrative sections, the U.S. missions in most Latin American countries included military attachés, military assistance advisory groups (MAAG), agricultural attaches from the Foreign Service of the Department of Agriculture, Peace Corps representatives, United States Information Service officers, Agency for International Development staff, and consular posts outside the capital city.14 The CIA normally would have a station chief and several agents at each embassy, although their organization was not depicted on official U.S. State Department charts for security reasons.15 The ambassador had varying degrees of control over embassy personnel. U.S. State Department Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) reported directly to and through the mission chief and were most dependent on him. On the other extreme were the MAAGs—highly operational in focus and more dependent on the Pentagon for their funding and operational decisions. Often times, the MAAG chief would do little more than inform the ambassador of his actions. In comparison, the ambassadorial control over the attaché was between these extremes. A Department of Defense directive in 1956 outlined the ambassador-attaché relationship as follows: The Chiefs of Diplomatic Mission [ambassadors] are aware that the primary mission of the military service attachés is to procure military intelligence information for and under the direction of their respective military services, and they have been instructed by the Department of State that locally assigned responsibilities of service attachés will not prejudice their primary mission.16

While the attaché primarily served his military superiors, the ambassador: [was to be kept] fully informed concerning [attaché] activities and shall make available to [the ambassador], upon request, their reports and memoranda. The chief of mission, in turn, has been instructed to keep

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them fully informed of pertinent reports and activities of other elements of the diplomatic mission.17

In a well functioning embassy, the ambassador and attachés would fully coordinate their actions and be in general agreement regarding the intelligence priorities. Often the ambassador would hold a country team meeting at the end of each week where the intelligence collection priorities of the embassy could be hammered out.18 When the intelligence priorities of the Pentagon differed from those of the U.S. State Department and the ambassador, regulations seemed to indicate that the attaché could file reports to their superiors over the objections of the ambassador.19 A strong ambassador, however, could delay or kill an attaché document if he disagreed with it.20 Attaché relations with other members of the country team varied depending on the situation. Since most Foreign Service officers reported directly to the chief of mission, the relationship of the attaches to the political officers depended on how closely attachés coordinated their activities with the ambassador. In the political-military realm, the attaché would work “handin-glove” with the embassy’s political officers. In some cases, the relationships between them appeared to be excellent.21 Most MAAGs had a good working relationship with the attachés and sometimes aided them in collecting intelligence. The MAAGs’ primary mission was to observe and report on the utilization of materiel furnished and personnel trained by the military assistance program, provide technical support, and train foreign armies to use the equipment.22 Attachés and MAAGs had no command relationship and reported to their individual superiors:23 for the attachés, their intelligence component in the Pentagon (after 1962, DIA), and for the MAAG, the theater commander (in the case of Latin America, the U.S. Caribbean Command—later changed to U.S. Southern Command). MAAG officers were not accredited to their host country as intelligence collectors and could be expelled from the country for providing sensitive information to attachés. Nevertheless, MAAG officers would often provide information to attachés on the readiness and training of the host country’s military.24 This was not always the case however. In interviews with several attachés, it is clear that some MAAG officers did not want to go beyond their mandate to train and equip the host military. For example, the Army MAAG chief for Cuba during the late 1950s, Colonel Robert Hook, would not provide attachés with information on the Cuban Army and refused to meet with attachés unless in full view of the host country personnel. Needless to say, MAAG officers’ hesitation to provide even rudimentary intelligence information sometimes strained relations between the two groups. Hook in particular was accused of going “native”—putting Cuban interests above the needs of the United States.25 If relations between attachés and MAAGs were sometimes strained, coordination between the attachés and the CIA could range from open cooperation to hostility. Official sources concerning this relationship are still

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classified but can be surmised from indirect references, interviews, and books.26 Regulations regarding the exchange of intelligence between the attaché and other “intelligence elements” (read CIA) were outlined in several Department of Defense directives. The June 1956 directive mandated that: Attachés as a matter of course will facilitate optimum lateral two-way exchange of information with attachés, intelligence elements of major U.S. commands, and other intelligence elements located in the countries to which they are accredited… The allocation of work between attachés and between attachés and other intelligence elements in a foreign country should normally follow the division of responsibility as proscribed by existing interdepartmental arrangements and should be coordinated with the U.S. Chief of Mission.27

In short, the CIA and the attaches should work together to achieve goals.28 The CIA would work the covert side of intelligence gathering, relying on informants and spies for most of their information. Attachés would work on overt collection, developing close relations with the host military. 29 Theoretically, the synergy of the CIA and attaché would produce quality intelligence. This cooperation, though, depended on the situation and sensitivity of CIA operations within the country. In the case of Guatemala, for instance, where there was a large CIA covert operation, attachés were, as a general rule, not privy to CIA efforts. The CIA station chief, though, had access to all attaché dispatches and intelligence because he controlled the cryptographical equipment in the embassy.30 The Army attaché accredited to Guatemala during the CIA sponsored coup complained in several letters to his superiors at the Pentagon that the CIA station chief would not coordinate his collection efforts with him.31 In a sympathetic but short letter a month later, his Army superiors told him, in short, to put up with the situation as it stood and provide “any and all assistance to the CAS [read CIA].”32 Yet, in most cases and countries, attaches and the CIA worked together—Guatemala was an exception. Attachés were asked to collect intelligence for two primary agencies— their particular service (Army, Navy, or Air Force) and the ambassador. Both the service component and the ambassador received intelligence collection priorities through the president and the NSC, which established National Intelligence Requirements (NIRs). The primary documents that the president and NSC produced were executive orders and NSC decision and intelligence directives.33 The service components, for example, translated these intelligence directives to intelligence requirements in a number of documents. The first was the Essential Elements of Information (EEI), which constituted a framework for gathering information in the field and for the preparation of intelligence at the Pentagon. The EEIs were updated periodically to adapt to changing local conditions. In short, EEIs were the standard operating procedures for intelligence gathering. The other primary mechanism was the

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Specific Request for Intelligence Information (SRI). These requests were sent by the collecting agency by cable, airgram, or letter. They were designed to satisfy needs that were not covered in EEIs. Complementing these was the Basic Intelligence Directive (BID), which was a compendium of intelligence operating instructions to guide attachés in their collection efforts. Basically, the EEI and SRIs told the attaché what to collect and the BID told him how to collect and report it.34 The ambassador also set requirements for the attachés to collect intelligence. His priorities also came from the NSC intelligence directives, but were filtered through the Secretary of State and the Assistant Secretaries of State (in the case of Latin America, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American affairs). To carry out the directives of his superiors at State, the ambassador would normally meet with his staff (which included the attachés) once a week to agree on collection priorities. Depending on the strength of the chief of mission, his priorities would at times override service requirements. Much depended on the embassy, the relations between the attaché and ambassador, and the local situation. In the early 1950s in Guatemala, for instance, Ambassador John Peurifoy decided all collection priorities, ordering the attachés to disregard service requirements. In other cases, attachés would go behind the ambassador’s back to file reports that might otherwise not have been permitted to leave the embassy. Gary McClellan, who has served as an instructor and director of attaché training at DIA, noted to this author that in many cases the ambassador, rather than the service, drove the collection effort. Often, he stated, “it didn’t matter what the attaché was being asked to collect under the formal [military] collection plan, the ambassador drove the collection train.”35 The attaché’s particular service and the ambassador, in their collection plans, asked the attaches to report on a wide variety of subjects. They could range from the military readiness of a particular military unit to the political predilections of a certain army officer. The BID, the standard operating guide for attaches, contained a decimal number system with over four hundred intelligence subject categories covering every conceivable topic. The attaché collection plan for Guatemala, which emphasized political-military reporting, differed greatly from the collection plan for the attaché to London, whose priorities were placed more on military innovations. The EEI was the key, for it could be tailored to meet the specific situation the attaché faced in his country of assignment.36 After the attaché had collected information and determined that it was worth reporting, there were a number of conduits through which he could report. Using the Army attaché system as an example, the first was a dispatch, filed in accordance with the BID, addressed to the Army G–2 for Intelligence at the Pentagon (after 1962, DIA). Attaches would type the document, put it in a diplomatic pouch where it normally went by aircraft to the State Department Library at Arlington, VA. There it was hand sorted and routed

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to the various Washington agencies. It was a slow process. McClellan claimed that it was not unusual to have a delay of several weeks to several months before an agency received an intelligence report. “There was not the CNN (Cable News Network) mentality back then,” he noted, “timeliness was not much of a factor.” Because of cost, attachés were authorized to use telephones or cables for “emergency purposes only.”37 The result was that routine information could take a great deal of time to reach those who requested it. In 1954 during the Guatemalan crisis the Central Intelligence Agency complained to the Army G–2 that it took upwards of one to two months to receive attaché dispatches from the Army’s document library. In response, the Army streamlined the procedures for Guatemala, assigning a mail sorter to handle dispatches coming in from that country. However, these ad hoc arrangements did not resolve the general problem of timeliness.38 Once the document reached the Army G–2, it was sorted and routed to the desk officer responsible for the area. Normally, desk officers had the responsibility for three or four countries and were the first to determine whether the report should simply be filed for further reference or referred to a reading panel for incorporation into the various intelligence documents produced at the Department of the Army level—the Daily Intelligence Digest or the monthly Intelligence Review.39 Second, the attaché could file the report through the embassy to the State Department. Routine attaché information would normally be included in the Joint Weeka—a weekly summary of news and commentary from the embassy to the State Department. The Weeka had a military section for attaché use. Like the country team meeting, there was a Weeka meeting with all the various proponents in the embassy, conducted normally by the deputy chief of mission (DCM), who would determine what information would go into this document. The attachés also could send their dispatches through State Department channels where the intelligence could be used by desk officers or intelligence analysts there. Most of the time, attachés shared their information freely with the State Department.40 Last, attachés could report to their regional military command (in the case of Latin America, the Caribbean Command). Normally, Latin American attachés would send courtesy copies of all their dispatches to intelligence analysts located at Fort Gulick, Panama. There, attaché reports would be analyzed, and if deemed important, published in the Caribbean Intelligence Digest. Because regional military commanders had a great deal of independent authority, reported directly to the Secretary of Defense, and presented yearly threat updates to Congress, attaché reports could theoretically influence policymakers in ways that might not be possible through State or Army channels. How were attaché reports incorporated in the formulation of policy at the executive level? Detailing the functions of each of the members of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is complex and beyond the scope of this study. This section will simply describe how attaché documents could theoretically reach the highest levels of government. Attaché intelligence reached the Army,

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State Department, and the CIA and was disseminated through the intelligence apparatuses of each organization. Each of these organizations would gather on a regular basis to pool their intelligence. The Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC) (changed to the United States Intelligence Board (USIB) after 1960) comprised the heads of these various agencies.41 Based on presidential requirements or requests, they would produce NIEs, formal papers that gave the president the current intelligence situation in various countries and its best guess as to what might transpire in the future. One of the bestknown NIEs was the estimate of 19 September 1962, which minimized the possibility that the Russians might deploy missiles in Cuba.42 Presidents and their staffs considered NIEs to be one of the most important documents in the formulation of foreign policy.43 The Office of National Estimates (ONE), the CIA organization which wrote NIEs for IAC approval, had access to all sources of intelligence, including CIA, attaché, and State Department reports. Normally the NIEs, when estimating the future of a particular country, would have a section that detailed the strength and disposition of the military. The ONE would use attaché reports extensively when compiling reports on these sections. This was primarily the area where the attaché had the most influence. Military sections in the case of the Guatemalan NIEs of 1952 and 1953, for example, were of great import because the military was considered to be the deciding influence on whether or not the government would have a pro or anti-U.S. policy.44 Aside from the formal NIE, the IAC had a number of interagency subcommittees including the Watch Committee and the National Indications Center (NIC), which handled day to day intelligence with the goal, according to intelligence expert Patrick McGarvey, “of getting all tidbits of intelligence to Washington in the shortest possible time.”45 These organizations would process intelligence as received and forward the most important to the National Command Authority (NCA). The Watch Committee and the NIC had access to attaché reports that reached them by cable or telephone. Informal channels also comprised a major conduit to the president. If deemed important by the component service chiefs, the Secretary of State, or the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), attaché reports could reach the president in meetings of the NSC, by phone calls, informal conversations, or memoranda by officials with access to the president.46 This is not to say that every attaché document reached the highest levels. It had to be important to the NCA at the time to receive attention. The IAC, for instance, did not produce annual NIEs for each country. Rather, it produced them in response to requests from the president or IAC principals (Secretary of State or Defense, for example). Even then, the NIE request had to be approved by the whole IAC, because writing an NIE was time consuming and resources were limited.47 For example, the IAC produced no NIEs on Cuba between 1952 and 1958 when Fulgenico Batista was in power. Once Fidel Castro began to shift towards the Soviet Union after 1959 as many as

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two NIEs per year were produced on Cuba. Bolivia had two NIEs devoted to it in the 1950s. Instead, attaché reports often found their way into the myriad of policy papers, research reports, and intelligence surveys produced by the various members of the IC. These products had varying degrees of influence depending on who read them.48 Because many decisions were relegated to levels lower than the president, policy papers, staff studies, and intelligence reports that contained attaché intelligence could influence other policymakers. The decision, for example, to push for military training for the Bolivian military in the early 1960s was made by the Joint Chiefs after consulting with the ambassador and attachés on the ground in Bolivia. In contrast, if little of concern was happening in the attaché’s host country, the dispatches might not even be read beyond the desk officer of his service. Herbert Huser, the Army attaché to Argentina in the late 1960s, noted that “papers and reports that were sent up to higher headquarters were impossible to retrieve and one often times didn’t know what happened to them or if one was being listened to. I would venture to guess that most of the time they were just filed away and ignored.” Upon assuming his duties as the French desk officer at the Pentagon, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Wimert found attaché dispatches from that country “scattered all over my desk.” It took him two months to get the reports filed and in order. Huser also added that requests from his desk officer sometimes bordered on the inane and made him question the competence of his immediate superior. For example, Huser filed a routine report on a radio he saw the Argentine Army using—a 1950s vintage much out of date. This report, though, seemed to catch the interest of his desk officer at DIA. He “wanted to know all about it,” Huser noted. “I provided him all the information on it but felt inside that the guy didn’t know what was going on and certainly not what the collection priorities were.” An attaché reporting from a strategically unimportant country with no imminent crisis certainly felt at times that nobody was reading or listening to what he had to say.49 In all, attaché reports could influence decision-makers in a number of ways. There were several conduits where their information could reach policymakers—through the Department of Defense, the State Department, the CIA, and the regional military commands. Attaché collection priorities reflected presidential and NSC directives and were flexible in responding to changing needs. The ability of attachés to do their job effectively at the embassy often hinged on their relationship with the country team. Most of the time team members got along, other times relations were contentious and impeded the exchange of information vital for accurate and timely reporting. The ability of the attaché to collect intelligence also depended on his qualifications and the training he received from the military. The next section will address how well attachés were selected and trained before their arrival in their host country.

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SELECTION AND TRAINING OF ATTACHÉS

In February 1947, the War Department laid out the qualifications for assignment of attachés. The memorandum noted that since the system occupied a vital position in the post-war intelligence program, only those officers who possessed certain qualifications and attributes could expect to obtain attaché positions. The qualifications were broken down into the following categories: general adaptability, general requirements, military knowledge and background, and language qualifications. General adaptability covered those personal traits of an officer viewed as essential for attaché duty. The candidate should exhibit personal qualities that would allow him to associate “on equal and congenial terms with the other members of the diplomatic mission.” If married (an unwritten requirement) he must be free from current or impending marital difficulties and from “abnormal” family ties. His family was required to accompany him to his country of assignment and be physically qualified to live there. The officer had to be a U.S. citizen. General requirements included being of good military bearing and appearance, no more than fifty-three years of age, having an overall “superior” rating in his evaluation reports, and possessing a bachelors degree or higher. Military knowledge and background included the ability to express oneself orally and in writing, to have held assignments normal for his experience, preferably to possess combat service and staff experience, and to have graduated from the Command and General Staff College (for those in the grade of lieutenant colonel or higher) and the Strategic Intelligence School (SIS). According to official policy, no officer would be considered for assignment who was not fluent in the language of the country for which he was being considered “which would be proven by practical testing.” Once assigned to a country he would have a month’s position training so that he would be thoroughly grounded in the official and indigenous colloquial languages. Finally, in a departure from past requirements, the 1947 guidance stressed that private income was not required because “present maintenance and entertainment allowances” were adequate.50 Many officers surveyed by the Army affirmed the value of these requirements. Attachés felt that the personal qualities of the individual were most important in predicting who would be a good attaché. In general, most former attachés discussed physical and psychological health, professional motivation, and professional competence. Under physical and psychological health, one former attaché noted that it seemed almost unnecessary to state the fact that personal, moral, and psychological balance were essential to a successful attaché. Looking back on twenty years of the attaché system, the DIA, the government organization tasked to oversee attachés, regretted that officers and officers’ dependents

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with psychological and physical weaknesses had gotten through the attaché screening process and damaged U.S. interests overseas. Such problems as alcoholism and excessive debt made officers vulnerable.51 Professional motivation was also a necessary prerequisite. In a letter to the Defense Intelligence School for Attachés, former attaché Brigadier General Tobias R.Philban noted that: An attaché has a uniquely lonely and responsible assignment. He represents in the most immediate fashion the service of his country abroad. He has to stand on his own, [for]…the true evaluation of his efforts may not be available for months or years.52

A productive attaché needed to show initiative—ask provoking questions, create situations where he could ask the right questions, promote contacts, create friendships, and seek out information that could yield useful intelligence.53 In addition to being free of physiological problems and displaying initiative, attachés stressed that officers needed to be successful in their profession. If attachés were expected to establish effective professional relationships with senior military officers of the host country they had to be able to exchange military doctrine and concepts, know U.S. strategic objectives towards the host country, the military orientation of the host country, relationships within military inner circles, the size and sophistication of the host country military forces, and any agreements which existed between the U.S. and the host country. A U.S. officer who was incompetent, saw his job as the last one before a generous military retirement, or was considered a below average military officer would represent U.S. interests badly and have little credibility with the host country’s senior officers.54 The importance of the attaché’s wife was also stressed in nearly every survey or paper. One attaché noted that during the course of an attaché tour it was not uncommon to entertain up to 150 guests at a cocktail party, 40 to 50 guests at a luncheon, and 70 to 80 guests at a formal dinner dance. The wife who shrank from such duties hampered her husband’s ability to perform his job. One attaché maintained that his wife’s “tact, charm, grace, and entertaining ‘know how’ was directly responsible for his obtaining valuable friendships, contacts, and intelligence on his host country’s military.”55 The wife could also provide an excellent “cover story” when she accompanied him on intelligence trips. A man and woman traveling in a car would not arouse as much notice as two men. In addition, the wives of attachés possessed diplomatic passports and had the same degree of diplomatic immunity as the attaché, which was important if either one were detained by host country security forces. One attaché claimed that his wife “was the best collector of intelligence on station.”56 On the other side of the coin, wives with drinking problems could pose risks.

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Language training was also deemed important. Because the attaché had to collect information overtly he had to rely on the physical senses—essentially what he could see, hear, or read. Because information would rarely be heard in his native tongue, his comprehension of what he heard was directly proportional to his command of the language spoken. Being able to read the language was also an important asset in that the attaché, aside from obtaining intelligence from conversations, gleaned a large percentage of his intelligence from publications available on the open market.57 Former attaché Brigadier General Edwin H.Simmons summed up the importance of language training: An attaché’s effectiveness is largely determined by his ability as an observer and reporter. If he doesn’t know the language of the country in which he is stationed, and know it well, he is in the position of being largely deaf and dumb.58

Colonel Charles V.Greffet, USAF, an attaché during the late 1950s and 1960s, noted the importance of both husband and wife being bilingual as well as sociable: It has been my observation that the ability to socialize in a foreign country is invariably related to the ability of husband and wife to speak the local language. Many couples, normally gregarious and friendly in their native tongue, become extremely limited in small groups if there is a language barrier. Pleasantries can be exchanged but substantive conversation cannot be maintained. The escape from this dilemma is usually a tendency to shrink from contact with locals and increase association with Americans residing abroad, thus greatly reducing effectiveness.59

From the above discussion of traits and characteristics that made a good attaché, it is clear that the job was demanding, both for the attaché and his family. How well did the military do in selecting attachés who would be able to carry out these tasks? Attachés who wrote papers or critiques about the attaché system had mixed opinions about selection procedures. Writing at the Air Command and Staff College in 1965, Major Bill Rippy contended that a screening of all officer records would reveal that as much as sixty percent of attachés would not meet the eligibility criteria. “It is a sad fact,” he noted, “that the military is still allowing personnel to be selected who are not qualified to handle the job. This has been verified through former attachés (by interview) who have witnessed actual cases, and have confirmed the need for better selection procedures.”60 The need to fill attaché billets around the world strained personnel managers in the armed services. In a report titled “Selection and Training of the Military Attaché Groups” written for the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) by outside consultants, the author noted that “all three services indicate, in

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general, the principle that only the highest caliber of individuals can fulfill these attaché posts.” However, with the great many embassies that needed to be filled and still fewer persons who met all the eligibility criteria, the authors acknowledged, “personnel managers from each service had made compromises in their standards.”61 The regulations gave an “out” in this regard. A close reading of the criteria from 1947, for instance, reads as follows: “there will be however, cases of exceptionally well-qualified officers who do not meet all the above requirements. When such exceptional circumstances can be clearly shown, request for waiver may be submitted.”62 According to the OSD report, though, this rule was probably used more liberally than the writers intended. Because of the challenges of overseas duty, attachés were supposed to be volunteers. Rippy, however, claimed that the term “volunteer” had more than one meaning when an assignment had to be filled. He gave an example of a former attaché to Denmark who estimated that only one-third of his class at SIS were volunteers.63 Lieutenant Colonel William Evans-Smith, who in 1962 sent out a survey to eighty former attachés, found that fifty percent were not volunteers and had been ordered to serve in foreign embassies.64 Rippy suggested that the main reason why so many accepted attaché positions was that no career officer wanted “to have a superior remember him for not accepting a duty that appeared undesirable.”65 The military had trouble recruiting military officers for attaché duty because it did not enhance an officer’s career; it put undue strain on wives and family, and lacked support from the Pentagon. Officers did not see assignment as an attaché as being career enhancing, despite official pronouncements to the contrary. Former CIA director Allen Dulles, in his book The Craft of Intelligence, asserted that “until recently a long tour in intelligence was viewed by the ambitious military officer as a ‘graveyard’ assignment, but this is no longer the case.”66 It is clear from interviews and attaché letters that most of them did not agree with Dulles. Senior lieutenant colonels or colonels who hoped to become general officers generally avoided attaché duty. The Hoover Report on the reorganization of the executive branch of government in 1955 had this to say on the subject: There is some reluctance now on the part of career service personnel…to take assignments or to specialize in intelligence work because of the limited opportunities to reach the grade of general officer in this field… The service would be more attractive if some of the highly trained officers…could anticipate eventual elevation to the grade of general officer67

Most officers believed that attaché duty took them away from the career mainstream. A sampling of male commissioned officers done by the Army in the late 1960s showed that the senior staff assignments they considered to be the most beneficial in advancing one’s career were (in order): Army General

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Staff duty, 46 percent; Joint Chiefs of Staff duty, 34.3 percent; Defense Agency Staff duty, 5.8 percent.68 Attaché duty garnered a miserly 3.4 percent of the vote. Promotion numbers seemed to support officers’ perceptions. In data compiled by a former Air Force attaché for his masters thesis at Texas Tech University, Colonel George A.D’Angelo found that of the total number of Air Force officers considered for promotion to general in 1970, close to half had assignments either in an operational billet or on a general staff during the time of selection, while very few had been attachés.69 Reflecting D’Angelo’s findings, the Air Force, in a study titled “Why Potential Generals Do Not Want to be Attachés” hypothesized ambitious officers who possessed all the credentials for promotion were unwilling to get out of the mainstream for four or five years—the total time spent on attaché preparation and duty (See Appendix 1).70 Because attachés were rated in their positions by ambassadors, senior officers feared that ambassadors would not be familiar with the rating system of their service and would damage their careers by writing evaluation reports that did not say the correct things.71 Former attachés also noted that the military still perceived—erroneously, that attaché duty was still a representational “cocktail circuit” which contributed little to the services’ operational capability.72 Another reason an attaché assignment was not seen as attractive was the stress put on spouses and family members. In a report written by the National War College based on over one hundred questions posed to attaches, the authors found that attaches considered the quality of life, education of children, and separation from older college age children and members of their extended family (particularly elderly, ill parents) as critical in their decision not to volunteer for attaché duty.73 The location of the assignment had much to do with their decision. After the end of World War II, the United States expanded attaché billets in “underdeveloped” regions: Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. The post-war attaché had less of a chance of being assigned to European countries with somewhat familiar living conditions not far removed from U.S. military installations. Underdeveloped countries had substandard living conditions, were far removed from home, and lacked proper medical care. In addition, the physical threat of violence and the financial burden of a high cost of living in some areas deterred many. Asked which items from a list of personal considerations were most important in deciding to accept an attaché assignment attachés listed the following three items:

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There is a clear pattern. All three items directly affected the quality of life the attachés could provide their families. With the great majority of attaché posts being in countries below the Western standard in all three items, there was yet another reason for a potential attaché not to volunteer for duty.74 Another problem that deterred potential officers from attaché assignments was the relative inexperience of the desk officers in the Pentagon. Desk officers received, collated, evaluated, and interpreted attaché reports and were supposed to be specialists who had intimate knowledge of an area or country of assignment.75 Theoretically, the analyst and attaché would be a close-knit team, working together to get the most accurate intelligence on the country in question.76 The frustration attachés experienced with their desk officers stemmed in part from the fact that almost all the officers assigned to this position had never been attachés. During the 1950s and 1960s especially, there was no career system for senior attachés in any of the services. The U.S. Air Force, by policy, prohibited a second tour as a desk officer. Likewise, the Army career development system was designed to ensure that an officer was unlikely to have a second assignment as an attaché or desk officer.77 Because of the desire of both the individual and his service to enhance his promotion opportunities, attachés returning from an overseas assignment would be posted to an operational assignment in the Pentagon or with troops at a stateside post.78 In a 1953 Intelligence Staff Officer Course paper entitled “Can the United States Air Force Better Utilize the Experience of Its Attachés?,” Major C.S. Rice bluntly concluded that there was no excuse for desk officers not to have served as attachés. “Who better,” he reasoned, could “inform and advise the attaché…than the former attaché to the same country?”79 Who can best evaluate the reports of the attaché in the country than the man he replaced? Who better knows the places, personalities, people, events, and customs which the attaché reports than the man just returned from one to three years of living with and working among these same people, places, personalities, events and customs? Can anyone better interpret a change than one who intimately knows what was changed, who changed it, and why?80

Often, pointed questions asked by attachés in-country to their desk officer would be met with: “I don’t know, I’ve never been there. You find out and tell us!”81 Frustrated attachés returning from overseas would tell fellow officers contemplating such an appointment to avoid the duty because of lack of support from the Pentagon. The short tour length of the attaché, two to three years, exacerbated the problem of collecting intelligence. Because there were no career attachés, each officer reporting to their post was new; sometimes the outgoing attaché would leave the country before the arrival of his replacement. This loss of

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continuity and lack of experience meant that the new attaché would spend the first half or more of his tour learning about the people and the customs of the country to which he was assigned. By the time he was comfortable with his contacts and had developed the friendship and confidence of his foreign associates so critical for intelligence, his tour would be over.82 So, who were the men who volunteered for attaché duty or were told to become attachés? There were a great many attachés who were excellent, served because they were experts on their country in question, had an appreciation of foreign cultures, and could establish contacts and perform an important intelligence service for their country.83 But what of the average attaché, or the below average one? Writing on this subject in February 1948, Richard A.Grussendorf suspected that some of his colleagues who had served in World War II with him had other motives for serving as attachés. The attaché system, he noted, “permits the possibility and probability of a great many applications based on personal motives only. The excitement and glamour of foreign places that a great many officers experienced during the war years…attracted many of them to this duty.”84 Grussendorf was implying that officers who were trying to escape from a tough assignment, were dissatisfied with their present job, or saw the attaché’s life as one continual round of social functions would not have a true interest in actual attaché work (which was tough and not necessarily enjoyable)—that of collecting intelligence. No matter what their qualification or motivation, attachés received from twelve to eighteen months of training before they took up their assignment. The next section looks at the courses of instruction at the Strategic Intelligence School for attaches and the various language schools—in particular the Defense Language Institute. *** Before World War II there was little or no attaché training before being assigned overseas. As that conflict came to a close, it became evident to War Department planners that the United States, in winning the war, had built an intelligence system capability that had been nonexistent before the war. To provide an environment in which this capability could be nurtured, the U.S. Army designed a school system to train present and future intelligence experts and attachés. The decision by President Truman not to revert to an isolationist stance but to support the reconstruction of West-Central Europe and Japan and oppose potential Soviet aggression as the lone superpower of the West increased the urgency for developing a significant intelligence capability to counter Soviet advances. In 1946, the first Strategic Intelligence School (SIS) commenced operations. The mission of the school was to provide training for military attachés and replacements for the War Department’s Intelligence Division. From its

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beginnings until the 1960s, the school kept its basic core curriculum, although the number of weeks of training varied between thirteen and sixteen.85 The curriculum of the school was divided into ten separate subject blocks for a total of seven hundred instruction hours, which included: principles and components of strategic intelligence, intelligence collection and reporting, administration, country research, communication procedures and security, photography, administration, counterintelligence, communism, and regional areas.86 Principles and components of strategic intelligence provided an overview of intelligence agencies such as the CIA, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) of the State Department, and the NSC, their responsibilities and how they coordinated with each other to produce an intelligence “product” for policymakers to use. These classes showed the attaché how he fit into the overall intelligence process. Intelligence collection and reporting provided a working knowledge of the procedures of collecting, evaluating, and reporting intelligence information. Here, attachés were taught the primary tools of the trade—collection techniques (observation, sketching, photography, memory training, electronic surveillance, and human contact), the role of the spouse in collection, how to fill out forms, writing the reports, and the importance of collection priorities (what intelligence information was most important to his superiors). Office management provided the student with a working knowledge of how to supervise his attaché team (which normally consisted of a civilian secretary and an enlisted assistant) and his responsibilities as part of the embassy country team. This was the mundane attaché work—how to fill out message forms, order supplies, and manage the records file. Attaché research provided the student with a working knowledge of his particular country of assignment—the military, political, economic, and cultural aspects. Most of the attaché’s time was spent in individual research to produce briefings and a paper on his country as well as periodic meetings with desk officers in the appropriate geographic region on collection directives, priorities, past production by the attaché on station, and a review of policy papers on his host country. The purpose was to provide a “seamless” transition for the new attaché once he arrived on station. Communications procedures and security provided the student a working knowledge of how to use codes and ciphers to encrypt classified messages. Attaché photography taught him the basic theories of photography, operation of photographic equipment, film processing, and how to take pictures in low light or adverse conditions. Instruction included a practical field exercise where attachés would take photographs in various conditions and receive critiques. Counterintelligence explained the involvement of the human operative in countering the host nation’s spies. Instruction included such areas as how to elude foot and vehicular surveillance, briefings on how the Soviets trained their operatives, how to defend against Soviet intelligence techniques and guard against methods of entry (locks and alarms), and demonstrations on

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how to avoid “elicitation efforts of others.” Dovetailing with the counterintelligence block was instruction on communism—the philosophic origins and objectives of communism “as a force for state and international political mastery” and its desire for “world domination and control.” Finally, regional instruction provided the student with a general knowledge of the geographic areas of the world and the strategic importance of his country of assignment. The course seemed to prepare the attaché to assume his duties. In its curriculum, SIS balanced broad instruction and general techniques of collection with thorough briefings and individual research on the country of destination. Yet, the candid criticisms of attachés surveyed from 1950 through the mid1960s indicate some disconnect between the published curriculum and what the attaches were actually taught. Many attachés surveyed were unimpressed with SIS because it failed to prepare them for duty. Urey Alexander, a senior attaché with service in the Soviet Union, remarked that at the SIS the attachédesignate learned the principles of the components of strategic intelligence and received a lengthy strategic intelligence orientation of the entire world. However, he had no opportunity to study the basic intelligence of his host country compiled in the National Intelligence Survey (NIS). Nor did he apply strategic intelligence principles to ascertain the country’s capabilities.87 Colonel William Evans-Smith’s aforementioned questionnaire to eighty former attachés dealt with the heart of the training program. Forty percent of the respondents stated that they “received no intelligence training at all prior to their arrival [in-country].” In general, fifty percent felt that they received inadequate training from the faculty at SIS in preparation for attaché duty.88 Another former attaché critical of SIS, Bill Rippy, cited the opinion of Major James F.Smith, a former attaché to Russia. Queried on the deficiencies at SIS, Smith concluded that the school was too general to be of much use because it did not tailor the instruction to the attaché’s country of assignment. Rippy cited another attaché, Colonel Harry B.Smith, also a former attaché to Moscow, who reiterated the failure of the SIS to prepare the attaché. He also recommended that SIS instructors be drawn from returning attaches. Expounding on his last point, Smith noted that he was surprised and disappointed during his attendance at SIS in 1958 that no faculty member had had duty behind the Iron Curtain. He also remembered being told that there had not been an ex-Curtain attaché on the faculty for at least the five preceding years, if ever. Adding to his displeasure was that there were no experienced personnel on the faculty to present subject material relevant to duty behind the Iron Curtain. Not once did an ex-Curtain attaché appear as a guest speaker nor did the school arrange for Curtain attaché-designates to meet with the several ex-Curtain attachés in the Washington area.89 Major Rippy added that “the free world country attaché-designates are equally being shorted…[for] being able to do the right thing at the right time is just as important in the free world as it is behind the Iron Curtain.” If the

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country-specific training of attachés directed towards the Soviet Union was inadequate, the training of Latin American bound attaches may have been even worse.90 The second important component of attaché training—and for most attachés the most important—was language training. Attachés received their language training at the Defense Language Institute (DLI), either in Washington (DLI-East) or in Monterrey California (DLI-West), at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI), or by private contract to civilian universities. The vast majority of attachés attended DLI. The DLI, which is the Defense Department’s technical organization for language instruction, traces its history back to the time of Pearl Harbor when it was discovered that there was a severe shortage of Japanese linguists.91 Before the war, language training was not centrally organized. At both West Point and Annapolis during the mid to late 1800s, French or Spanish proficiency was required for graduation. Attachés sent to countries where they did not speak these two languages often had to pay for private instruction.92 During times of crisis, the War Department set up ad hoc schools to train linguists. Examples include ten attachés trained in Japanese during and after the Russo-Japanese War and the addition of German to the curriculum of the Command and General Staff School in 1910.93 During World War II, the Army set up its first centralized language instruction in November 1941 located in San Francisco and subsequently moved during the war (for security reasons) to Camp Savage, Minnesota. Over six thousand men graduated from the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS) and were able to translate Japanese and other languages to support the war effort.94 The rise of the U.S. as a world superpower pointed to the need for a permanent language school able to train a steady stream of linguists as, for example, attachés or translators. In September 1947, the Army changed the name of MISLS to the Army Language School (subsequently changed to the DLI in 1963) and began instruction in over fifteen languages (subsequently expanded to over twenty).95 DLI emphasized mastery of the spoken language. Under what the school called “the intensive method” all instruction and conversation was carried out in the language studied. Formal study of grammar was absent. Instead, the school stressed the learning of sentence patterns and native pronunciations through usage and exposure. Contact was six hours a day, five days a week.96 The length of the courses varied with the difficulty of the language studied and the level of student proficiency. Standard courses varied normally from twenty-four to forty-four weeks, with languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic taking forty-four weeks or more. The FSI developed a language proficiency rating system to provide a meaningful way of characterizing language skill. Language proficiency was expressed in terms of speaking proficiency (S-#) and reading comprehension

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(R-#). Most attaché positions required a language capability level of S–3 and R–3. The effect of course length on expected language speaking proficiency is shown in Appendix 2. Proficiency levels are explained in Appendix 3. The expected speaking proficiency for a student depended not only on the difficulty, but also the time and effort the student put into the language. From even a cursory look at Appendices 2 and 3, it becomes clear that the standard six month course in Spanish or the year long course in Chinese would produce a student with an average language aptitude at the 2/2+ range, falling short of S–3/R–3 required for minimum professional proficiency. By governmental standards, the attaché would not be able to speak or read the language with enough accuracy to grasp essentials of conversations or articles in his field of expertise. Yet, this was the only language instruction the attaché received before he reported to his host country. Students also acknowledged the shortcomings of language training—both in the length and quality. Colonel George Champion, writing in 1952, noted that it was not possible to train an officer to the point of fluency in the language during the short time devoted to preparation. The language training, he stated, gave him sufficient training to enable him to “get along” in the language, but little else.97 In a special report on this subject, the Air Force noted that the end of tour reports on file at the Air Attaché Support Branch reflected a very high level of personal concern by returning attachés about the attaché language capability on station.98 In surveys given to returning attachés in the early 1960s, about forty percent did not feel that their language training was adequate and eighty percent felt additional language training would have been helpful. One evaluator of this survey concluded that language training was inadequate, too short, and did not give attaches the necessary aptitude. The critical consideration that prevented extended language instruction was the time it took away from “mainstream” assignments. Extending language training by a year would have prolonged the absence from the attaché’s branch. Since during their absence on attaché duty their peers were in assignments considered more relevant to career advancement, the idea of extending training even more was anathema to attachés who wished to be considered for promotion Other circumstances that prevented true mastery of the language included a lack of an immersion environment, the school’s low grading standards, and course sequencing. A foreign language school on U.S. soil, DLI was not an immersion environment. After their six contact hours per day, attachés would go home to their families and probably speak English and not use their newly acquired skills. The non-immersion environment may have slowed learning somewhat and affected their motivation to learn the language. It is also significant that DLI eliminated very few officers from their language courses. This may indicate that DLI grading standards were low or that officers were allowed to graduate without meeting the standards.99

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Finally, course sequencing and personal circumstances had an impact on the language proficiency of attachés before they went to their assignments. Some attachés went to DLI before SIS. Thus there was a lag of four months between the end of the language instruction and when they reported to their assignment.100 A study sponsored by the DIA found that a large percentage of students attending DLI required some kind of “special” training because of such problems as late release from prior assignments, vacation en route to school, late selection as an attaché, illness, or emergency. Every day of instruction in the foreign language was crucial, yet many attaché-designees were unable to take the course in its entirety.101 In all, DLI could provide the motivated attaché with the instruction he needed to perform his job well. This officer, though, had to go beyond classroom instruction. Especially with language instruction, the attaché would need to tune out all distractions in his native tongue and continue to study the foreign language diligently up until he reported to his host country. The average attaché, though, came out of both schools with the need for more instruction. Unfortunately, this shortcoming would have to be made up incountry, at the expense of intelligence collecting.102 *** Attachés played an important role in the overall U.S. intelligence collection effort. Their reports on foreign militaries were essential in the formulation of intelligence estimates. Yet there seemed to be a disconnect between the importance they played in the overall national collection effort and how they were selected and trained. Granted, some attachés, because of prior training or expertise, were well suited for this duty. The vast majority, however, came to their assignment needing more training. Because attachés were not full time intelligence professionals and were not promoted strictly on their performance as attachés, there was little urgency to improve at their jobs. After a two or three year tour, the attaché who was a failure could simply return to his traditional duties with little or no effect on his career. His replacement would most likely have the same training and would repeat the same mistakes. Other attachés, though, learned quickly once they reported to their host country and performed well. If they had had more training, though, they could have done better. The next three chapters will explore how well attachés performed in Guatemala, Cuba, and Bolivia. Some of the reasons for their success or failure depended on their abilities and training. Much also depended on difficulties of the collection requirements in the specific country. There were complex reasons behind every attaché success or failure. By exploring these country case studies, we will be able to draw some conclusions regarding attaché training and performance.

Figure 1: Reception in early 1953. From left to right, Bernice Chavez, Major Manuel Chavez, USAF, Unknown Guatemalan Education Representative and Colonel Carlos Sarti, the Director of the Superior Defense Council. Colonel Sarti was one of the military leaders who would overthrow Arbez. Reprinted with permission from Lt. Col. Manuel Chavez.

Figure 2: Reception for the departure of Major Chavez, 1953. From Left to Right: Major Chavez, Raúl Osegueda, Guatemalan Foreign Minister, and Juan Villalaz, Minister of Panama. Chavez had close relations with top civilian leaders of the Arbenz government. Reprinted with permission from Lt. Col. Manuel Chavez.

Figure 3: Reception for General Reuben Hood at the Presidential Palace, November 1954. From Left to Right: Col P.Catasus, Cuban Air Force, Colonel Howard Slaton, Air Attaché, Colonel Leonard Dysinger, Chief of the U.S. Air Force Mission to Cuba, President Batista, Major General Reuben Hood, Commander of the Panama Canal Zone, and Colonel Carlos Tabernilla, Commander of the Cuban Air Force. Reprinted with permission from Col. Howard W.Slaton.

Figure 4: Ambassador Gardner with President Batista, May 1955. Colonel Slaton is second from left. Reprinted with permission from Col. Howard W.Slaton.

Figure 5: Colonel Edward Fox, Pat Wimert, Colonel Paul Wimert, and General Barrientos, 1963. Reprinted with permission from Col. Paul Wimert.

Figure 6: Colonel Wimert riding with President Paz, February 1963. Wimert’s equestrian skills served him well in establishing relationships in Bolivia. Reprinted with permission from Col. Paul Wimert.

Figure 7: President Paz and Colonel Fox at the Presidential Palace, 1963. Paz claimed that their relationship was contentious. Reprinted with permission from Col. Edward J.Fox.

Figure 8: Colonel Fox receiving thanks from locals in the “La Villa” area after the dedication of Alliance for Progress constructed school, 1963. Reprinted with permission from Col. Edward J.Fox.

Figure 9: Colonel Fox talking with the people of the Cochabamba Valley, 1963. General Barrientos is behind Fox in a checked shirt. Fox would be accused of inserting himself in the politics of Bolivia. Reprinted with permission from Col. Edward J.Fox.

CHAPTER THREE

U.S. Attachés, Guatemala, and the Overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz, 1950–1954

In June 1954 the elected Guatemalan government of President Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown, ushering in forty years of dictatorial and pseudodemocratic government. Both internal and external forces were involved in the overthrow, although different authors attribute more influence to one factor than the other. Authors like Jim Handy attribute the golpe mostly to internal factors.1 Conversely, U.S. diplomatic historians have tended to emphasize the United States’ role in organizing an invasion under Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas as the driving force behind Arbenz’s fall. Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, authors of the expose Bitter Fruit, stress that the primary motivation behind Operation PBSUCCESS (the Central Intelligence codename for the operation to overthrow Arbenz) was the desire to protect United Fruit Company (UFCO) investments in Guatemala.2 Piero Gleijeses, author of Shattered Hope, argues that there was not one “convenient villain” that caused the overthrow of Arbenz. Although the United States was the dominant player, there was also “a complex interplay of imperial hubris, security concerns, and economic interests” that ultimately led to Arbenz’s undoing.3

HISTORIOGRAPHY AND ATTACHÉ MEASUREMENT CRITERIA

All the above authors concur, however, on the central role the military played in the overthrow of Arbenz. Scholars who have studied the Guatemalan military and its role tend to emphasize several factors within the military that factored into the golpe. Piero Gleijeses, who has written extensively on this era, notes that the military was the strongest institution within the country and was so powerful that it could make or unmake presidents. According to a U.S. State Department intelligence report cited by Gleijeses: 55

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The prestige and disgruntlement of the armed forces was predicated to a degree on its combat capabilities—its training and the amount and quality of the arms it possessed. This capability had been gradually eroded from the time the United States placed an embargo on all arms coming into the country in 1948.5 By 1954, the Guatemalan Army was desperate for arms and spare parts.6 This chapter, in part, will seek to determine how aware attaches were of the combat capability of the Guatemalan armed forces and the disgruntlement within the armed forces because of the U.S. embargo. Another aspect of the Guatemala military that authors have emphasized was its reaction to Arbenz’s agrarian reform measures. Jim Handy, who has extensively studied these issues, devoted a chapter to the subject of the military’s opposition to these reforms. He sees this opposition as the main reason for Arbenz’s overthrow. Other authors see the military’s reaction to agrarian reform as having little or no effect on the overthrow. These authors do, however, emphasize that Arbenz was concerned about the military’s support of his agrarian reform measures and took steps to ensure the military’s loyalty. Part of this chapter will measure how aware attachés were of Arbenz’s actions and of the military’s reaction to agrarian reform.7 To understand the political situation in Guatemala, it was essential to understand their military. U.S. policymakers relied on military attachés for insights into the inner workings of that body. Policymakers wanted to know, for example, which military officers or factions would support Arbenz, which were neutral, and which were actively working toward his overthrow. This information was not easily culled. Adding to the complexity of the collection effort was the involvement of the CIA, who through its own informants was attempting to find out the same information. Attachés were often not privy to CIA operations in Guatemala. For both the attachés and the CIA operatives, Guatemalan officers were understandably reluctant to tell Americans where they stood politically. As one U.S. military attaché noted in an Intelligence Digest Review article, Guatemalan officers found to oppose Arbenz were “often cashiered by the president for treason.”8 In this environment, only those attachés who had established close personal relationships with their military counterparts were able to determine their political views. Piero Gleijeses is critical of the attachés’ ability to do this. He contends that few officers were able to establish these relationships. They did not succeed, in his words, in “understanding” their military counterparts.9 Other authors, such as Nicholas Cullather, also report on the inability of

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attachés to get close to Guatemalan officers, especially those in Arbenz’s inner circle. Thus, the final part of this chapter, in part, will measure how successful attachés were in establishing close relations with influential Guatemalan officers and whether U.S. officers had an entrée into the inner workings of the Guatemalan armed forces.10 In summary, this chapter will examine all the attaché dispatches from 1950 to June 1954 and will measure the degree to which they accurately perceived and assessed trends and events in the Guatemalan military that had significant impact on events in that country. The specific trends this chapter will focus on are the combat capabilities of the military and their response to the arms embargo, the military’s reaction to the agrarian reform initiatives, and the attaches’ ability to establish close contacts with military officers in Arbenz’s inner circle. How attaches detected and reacted to these significant phenomena will provide a framework for judging the effectiveness of their work in general. In addition, this chapter will also look at Tier II of Holley’s model—determining whether policymakers in the Pentagon, State Department, or White House used the information attachés provided in determining policy decisions regarding Arbenz. By looking at Tier I and Tier II factors, this chapter will judge not just the awareness attachés had of the Guatemalan military but whether policymakers in Washington utilized these reports effectively. *** Before we examine these phenomena, this chapter will first profile two of the most prominent attachés to serve during the Arbenz administration—Army Colonel Aloysius McCormick and Air Force Major Manuel Chavez. In doing so, this section will attempt to answer the following questions: what were their qualifications, duties, and responsibilities, both to the U.S. embassy and their superiors in the Pentagon?11 Did the services expect different reporting? How did this affect their ability to report on the specific trends this chapter will assess? ARMY

The Army’s attaché from 1952 to 1954 was Aloysius McCormick, a West Point graduate who commanded an infantry battalion in the 69th Division during World War II and received two bronze stars for valor. After the war ended, he served as an infantry instructor at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he applied to be an attaché.12 McCormick became an attaché because he wanted a change. Like many World War II veterans, the humdrum of the post-war peacetime army bored him. McCormick wanted new experiences. An attaché position, he thought, would suit him. He recalled his earlier view that such an assignment would be “exciting, something new.”13 He realized that such an assignment would not advance his career. But that did not seem to matter to him:

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Observing Our Hermanos de Armas The infantry branch considered attaché duty as an out of the way assignment. They didn’t want anybody doing anything but straight infantry stuff. But that didn’t matter to me—career was the last thing on my mind. I wasn’t going to go anywhere in the infantry at that time—I was a tactics instructor. So attaché duty looked like an interesting assignment—and it certainly turned out that way!14

McCormick had little knowledge of Central America—he had never even visited any of the region’s countries. To prepare him for attaché duty, the Army sent him to the SIS. There he took a twenty-hour block of instruction (out of a total of six months of instruction) on Latin America. This was not enough, as he admitted. “The Strategic Intelligence School prepared me well for attaché duty, especially in techniques of collection and filling out reports. Its shortcomings were definitely related to a thorough grounding in Guatemala. I really didn’t know much about the country before I went down there.”15 The Army also had to improve McCormick’s Spanish. He had studied Spanish while a cadet at West Point, but had not practiced since his Academy days twenty years earlier. Before intelligence school, he spent six months at the Army’s language school in California. This preparation proved helpful but insufficient to understand his Guatemalan counterparts. “I came out of the school with what I thought was a pretty proficient grasp of the language. But once I got to Guatemala, I had problems tuning into their frequency because they spoke so fast…it took time to get used to this.” McCormick did improve once in Guatemala but he was never comfortable with the language.16 McCormick’s discomfort increased once he reported to Guatemala. The attaché he replaced, Colonel Samuel Treadway, had left the country on orders three months before McCormick’s arrival, leaving the new attaché with little idea of how he was supposed to operate in Guatemala. It was army standard operating procedure (SOP) for an outgoing officer to leave what was known as a “continuity file” for his replacement. This file contained memoranda and a list of points of contact designed to make the transition from one officer to another as smooth as possible. Treadway left no such file. McCormick thus had little idea of what his new job entailed. It would take him months to learn what Treadway had failed to provide.17 McCormick also had little or no idea of the contacts Treadway had made with senior members of the Guatemalan military. McCormick could not answer such questions as which military officers would be friendly and give information to the United States? Which officers were not worth the time and effort to contact? The failure to provide a continuity file pointed to a larger systemic problem in the attaché system, namely, the rotation of officers back to the United States every two or three years. Attachés such as Treadway and McCormick, with limited Spanish skills, would spend their first year or two in country mastering the language and gaining the confidence of Guatemalan officers. Soon after the attaché reached this point, it would be

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time to rotate back to the United States. The process would then be repeated by the next attaché. The continuity file, while helpful, did not always solve the problem of how to get information that often came through personal one on one friendships developed over time.18 The Army attachés had to report on a wide variety of subjects, including the political, economic, sociological, and topographic aspects of the country. Attachés used the BID as a guide to determine the priority of subjects to be explored. The Army considered McCormick’s job important because, in the words of the BID, current information in all these fields (political, economic, and the like), developed and interpreted from a military viewpoint, was “of vital significance in evaluating trends, and in the preparation of strategic plans.”19 The problem with reporting on so wide a variety of topics was that the attaché’s energies were often diverted from political-military reporting. The BID contained over three hundred entries on everything from bridge construction, water flow, plate tectonics, and deforestation. McCormick concurred. “I was given taskings by Army intelligence to look at water systems, roads, tunnels, bridges, and so on. I knew that these were secondary to my other responsibilities in the embassy but they took up a great deal of time and energy.”20 In reporting on the political-military characteristics of Guatemala, McCormick was operating under some handicaps—he did not speak the language, he could not establish continuity with the previous Army attaché, and often times his energies were diverted from strictly military reporting. In the case of Guatemala, these shortcomings were mitigated by the willingness of Arbenz’s opponents to volunteer information. Also helpful were fellow attaches who were fluent and experienced. When the attaché support structure was not present, an attaché’s lack of close contacts with the military would understandably be detrimental. THE AIR FORCE

Major Manuel Chavez was the assistant air attaché in Guatemala between 1950 and 1953. Born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Chavez was fluent in Spanish. He brought a wealth of knowledge to the assignment. During World War II, he served as detachment commander of the Counterintelligence Unit, Caribbean Air Command, Panama. The detachment was responsible for reporting Latin American military intelligence back to Washington. Chavez had come to know Guatemala through these experiences. As he explained to this author in an interview, “I was elated when informed of my assignment to Guatemala. I had a deep respect for Guatemalan culture and traditions and felt I could contribute to the intelligence collection effort in that country.”21 Chavez was well suited to the job. William Calderhead, second secretary of the embassy at the time, noted that Chavez was “an extremely outgoing

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fellow …and had the capacity to meet people. He was open and warm and his relationships with many officers of the Guatemalan military were close. It would not be an understatement to say that he was the most important member of the embassy country team as far as making inroads with the military.”22 Like McCormick, Chavez first attended the Strategic Intelligence School but because of his fluency in Spanish was not required to take the language course. He had previously attended the Counterintelligence Course at Camp Holibird, Maryland from 1946–1947. There he had acquired valuable skills in collection of information and writing of reports. He had the additional advantage of practicing them in several countries prior to serving in Guatemala. He did not attend any specialized schooling before his assignment. Chavez brought to his assignment many of the skills that McCormick lacked—native fluency, past experience in the region, and an understanding of Latin American culture. He would use these talents well and was often able to assist attaches like McCormick in obtaining information they would not otherwise have been able to obtain. Air attachés had different duties and responsibilities than their Army counterparts. They normally operated in teams of three and were responsible for several countries simultaneously. In addition to Guatemala, Chavez and his associates were accredited to Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras. Their primary duty was to maintain records of airfields and airstrips for the Air Facilities Chart, a public document available to all aviators both in the U.S. and abroad. Just as important was their mission to report on their assigned country’s air forces.23 Political-military reporting was ancillary to the air attaches’ mission. As Chavez put it, it was not “a priority.” “We were never specifically assigned to do it. We did so voluntarily” in the course of our contacts with friends and acquaintances.24 Or rather, this information came voluntarily to Chavez, not to his fellow air attachés. Brigadier General Wendell Bevan, who served briefly with Chavez as an assistant attaché, explained it this way: “most of us Air Force guys were concerned with aircraft stuff. We let Manny [Chavez] do the political stuff. We stuck to photographic intelligence and updating the radio and airport fact charts. We had enough work doing this because these Latin American airports were primitive, there were always new airstrips popping up that we hadn’t discovered before. Chavez was the political guy.”25 Chavez’s political-military reporting was thus an anomaly among air attachés. The Air Force defined a successful attaché as one who diligently updated the Air Facilities Chart and reported on the current status of Central American air forces. The service cared little if its attachés reported on political matters. During Chavez’s three years of reporting on political-military matters, he did not receive a single note from his Air Force superiors in Washington complimenting him on his work; a remarkable oversight considering the quality of his reporting.26

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The ability of air attaches to use government aircraft could be used to advantage to obtain information from Guatemalan officers. The air attaché’s C–47 aircraft, nicknamed La Quetzalita, was used primarily for airport surveys and transportation between the five countries to which the attaches were accredited. However, whenever the aircraft went for maintenance to the United States, Chavez would invite Guatemalan officers to accompany him. Chavez’s official reason for bringing the Guatemalan officers was to inspect and tour U.S. Air Force facilities. However, the officers were just as excited to shop at the base exchanges for friends and family. Chavez referred to these shopping sprees as bringing the Guatemalan officers to the “land of the big BX [Base Exchange].”27 These activities were very helpful in establishing a cooperative and trusting relationship with officers of the Guatemalan Air Force. During the trips the officers spoke more openly of their opposition to Arbenz. Among the officers who flew with Chavez was Colonel Luis Girón, Chief of the Air Force. Four officers who made the trips with Chavez would become Chiefs of the Guatemalan Air Force in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Chavez recalled that years later he would meet them again in other activities. “They never forgot the comradeship developed in the early days,” he noted.28 Chavez would use his contacts, his fluency, and his ability to make friends to great effect during his time in Guatemala. Attachés such as McCormick benefited greatly from the intelligence Chavez obtained. Attaché reporting would suffer with his departure in June 1953. *** COMBAT CAPABILITIES OF THE GUATEMALAN ARMY AND THEIR REACTION TO THE U.S. ARMS EMBARGO

This chapter will first examine how well attaches reported on the combat capabilities of the Guatemalan Army. The Guatemalan armed forces in the 1950s were similar to many of the Central American armed forces at the time. They did not receive much respect from the United States. Typical is the following estimate from the U.S. Army’s Intelligence Review Digest: Latin Americans continued to rely on the United States for defense of the Western Hemisphere. They made little progress toward developing effective armed forces. A brake on military progress was economic backwardness, [the] instability of many governments, and isolationism.29

The one exception was the compliment the journal gave to the units Colombia supplied to the war effort in Korea. The reason other Latin American countries such as Guatemala did not give such aid was “the professional inferiority some felt compared to the United States and the fact that their forces would not perform well.”30

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This view, although ethnocentric, was militarily accurate. In the early 1950s the Guatemalan Army had the strength of roughly six thousand men and was maintained primarily for internal security. Their units were widely dispersed throughout the country; the largest was a regiment (approximately eight hundred men), two of which were in Guatemala City. The troops were predominantly infantry, with small numbers of artillery and horse cavalry, but no service units. Territorially, the country was divided into ten subdivisions (seven military zones and three military bases), the commanders of which had administrative and tactical control. Practical combat training was limited because the troops were constantly short of supplies and funding and spent the majority of their time on civil works projects. The recruits spoke many Indian dialects, but little or no Spanish. Arms and equipment were largely obsolete and unserviceable World War II vintage. Their air force had about 350 people and 38 aircraft.31 The small size and lack of complexity of Central American armed forces made reporting on the armed forces relatively easy. McCormick and his generation, grizzled World War II and Korea veterans, had defeated Hitler’s army and now manned Western Europe against the Soviets. They naturally looked upon the Guatemalan military as hopelessly backward and impoverished. It was much simpler judging the effectiveness of dismounted infantry than innovation in Soviet tank and combined arms warfare. Attachés such as McCormick also seemed more comfortable reporting on strictly military matters. McCormick had spent his entire career in and amongst soldiers and military units and could easily judge and report on military issues. As he confided to this author several times, reporting on the military had a “clean” nature to it. It did not have the complexity and ambiguities of politicalmilitary reporting. That was attractive to McCormick.32 McCormick gravitated to this area of attaché reporting immediately upon his arrival. A month after settling in, he was off to inspect the military. In a group of dispatches in late September 1952, he laid out their state of readiness. His comments were not complimentary. On the combat readiness of the Fourth Military Zone, Mazatenango—“although the discipline and morale of these troops appeared to be high, it is not believed that they would be effective in combat. [They suffered from] lack of combat training, insufficient ammunition, inadequate maneuvering grounds, poor equipment and clothing, and inadequate transportation.”33 McCormick was a bit more complimentary of the Guardia de Honor in Guatemala City. This unit, which received a greater share of the military budget, was the showpiece of the Army. “Colonel [José] Barzanallana appears to be a dynamo of energy and to be making considerable progress in [the] appearance, training, and morale of this Regiment.” However, like the Fourth Military Zone, “it is not believed that this Regiment could be very effective in combat due to lack of range practice, realistic combat training exercises, shortage of ammunition, and inadequate transportation.”34 McCormick made similar observations about the Second Regiment in early October.35

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McCormick was very positive about the effect of U.S. training on the Guatemalan military. During his visit to the Second Regiment he observed a tactical exercise carried out by the unit and indicated that the Guatemalans had profited from attendance at U.S. service schools and the assistance of the U.S. Army mission. He complimented the Guatemalans for using U.S. doctrine.36 On the whole, McCormick’s verdict was more negative than positive. Still, Guatemala had the best army in Central America. The U.S. attaché in El Salvador, tasked by the Army to conduct an overall evaluation of Central American armies, reported, “the Guatemalan Army is the best equipped and drilled of all the armies of Central America. It is the only army capable of maneuvering and operating as a modern force.”37 Guatemala may have been weak by U.S. standards but it could be a formidable force in the region, a point appreciated by Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras. McCormick’s superiors were pleased with his reporting on the military strength of the Guatemalan Army. A good deal of the tasks that his superiors sent him during his time in Guatemala consisted of requests for information on the military. On the Second Regiment—“this report is of considerable value to our understanding of the organization, strength, equipment, and training of the Second Regiment. Your personal inspection of the unit…is the best possible source for an accurate and current description of all phases of activity there.”38 His superiors were equally complimentary regarding his reporting on the Guardia de Honor. “This report…is another which adds important information to our knowledge of Guatemalan Army units…and constitutes a valuable addition to our overall collection effort.”39 This report would further reinforce Washington’s opinion that while the Guatemalan Army could effectively repel any regional threats they would be of little help in hemispheric defense against a Soviet invasion. If that invasion occurred, according to a secret evaluation of Latin American militaries in 1951, they would “have to rely on the United States for defense.”40 Indeed, attaché reports on Guatemalan military strength went all the way up to the president. In the NIE of 1953, the report noted that “the Army (six thousand men) is the only organized element in Guatemala capable of rapidly and decisively altering the political situation…[of particular note] are the two regiments (one thousand six hundred men) stationed in the capital city and trained under the supervision of the U.S. Army Mission. [They are] better equipped than other units of the Guatemalan Army.” These and other NIEs repeated verbatim McCormick’s estimates on the military.41 The attachés also reported on the army’s reaction to the U.S. arms embargo. The army could not obtain weapons because of the sanctions the United States had placed on Guatemala late in the presidency of Arbenz’s predecessor, Juan Arévalo. Traditionally, the United States had supplied Guatemala with arms and munitions, but the Truman administration instituted an embargo in 1950. The U.S. President feared that because of the increasing communist

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infiltration in Guatemala, arms could fall into communist hands and be used to further Soviet goals in the hemisphere. On one occasion when the Guatemalan ambassador to the United States asked the State Department to lift the boycott, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs John Cabot responded bluntly that “we [have] to be sure about the orientation of the people who [are] getting arms [before we lift the boycott].”42 Attachés were very aware of the armed forces desire for weapons and their frustrations with the Washington boycott. In a visit to the Escuela Politécnica in March 1953, McCormick had a long conversation with Chief of the Army Carlos Díaz over lunch with other senior officers. Díaz, who became slightly drunk, continued to question McCormick and the U.S. military mission chief, Army Colonel Thomas Hanford, about why the U.S. had imposed the boycott on Guatemala and why they could not obtain weapons, emphasizing the effect this was having on the morale in the Guatemalan Army. In his dispatch, McCormick observed that this boycott was obviously “a sore point.”43 The United States also continued to block arms shipments from such countries as Cuba, Britain, Argentina, Mexico, and Sweden. The problems were most pronounced in the Air Force, where the military had only four P-26s. These planes were continually down for spare parts that they could not obtain from foreign governments. In an Air Intelligence Digest report entitled “Communism in Guatemala,” Chavez noted that Guatemalan aircraft were “obsolete, but at least still in flying condition.” He noted that in his conversations with Army and Air Force officers, they emphasized that they were not communist, that they needed equipment to protect themselves against further communist penetration, and that they were dismayed that Washington was not supporting them. In concluding the dispatch, Chavez also found it hard to believe that the military would “continue to support Arbenz and his policies” under the present conditions.44 Overall, army and air attachés accurately portrayed the Guatemalan armed forces’ strength, capabilities, and disgruntlement with the arms embargo. Dealing solely in the military realm, officers found this part of their job simple. Those attachés who were uncomfortable with their language proficiency often fell back on military reporting because it was what “they knew best.”45 These officers would find political reporting much more challenging.46 The remainder of this chapter will examine this type of reporting.

THE AGRARIAN REFORM INITIATIVES AND THE ARMY

Agrarian reform was an essential part of the president’s goal of bringing capitalist development to Guatemala. To accomplish this reform, Arbenz strongly believed he needed the military to remain neutral so he could carry through his plan. A question central to this chapter is the degree to which U.S. military attachés were aware of Arbenz’s efforts to win military support for his reforms and the military’s reaction.

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Inaugurated in 1951, Arbenz presided over the most wide-ranging agrarian reform in Central American history. His agrarian reform bill, known as Decree 900, called for the expropriation of all uncultivated land on farms larger than 667 acres. Smaller farms were exempted from expropriation, provided that at least two-thirds of the total acreage was under cultivation. Also excluded from expropriation were farms less than 221 acres, land belonging to Indians, and farm communities.47 Some historians have described Arbenz’s reforms as moderately capitalist. Piero Gleijeses, in his conclusion to Shattered Hope, however, considered Arbenz’s agrarian reform measures as revolutionary for Guatemala, but less so when compared to other land reforms efforts in the 20th century.48 Arbenz’s Decree 900 directly affected the most important U.S. company in Guatemala, United Fruit (UFCO). UFCO was the largest single private landowner, the largest single business, and the largest employer. In Guatemala alone, UFCO owned four hundred thousand acres, or 1.5 percent of the Republic’s total land area. Together with its subsidiary, the International Railways of Central America (IRCA), UFCO owned ninety-seven percent of Guatemala’s railroads. It controlled Guatemala’s only port on the Atlantic, Puerto Barrios. Furthermore, a UFCO subsidiary, the Tropical Radio and Telegraph Company, controlled most of Guatemala’s international radiotelephone and cable services.49 Decree 900s expropriation of all uncultivated land on farms— while effecting many of the larger privately owned fincas as well as state farms—was, in the perception of both UCFO and the U.S. embassy, targeted at the company.50 Attachés were alert to the military’s view of agrarian reform and their interaction with Arbenz. Theodore J.McAdam, an assistant air attaché who worked with Chavez, reported on several important early trends, including the replacement of the commander of the Guardia Civil with an Arbenz confidante. In an Air Intelligence Report dated March 1952, McAdam correctly judged that this change stemmed from Arbenz’s desire to ensure the success of his reform efforts. Through his informant, McAdam also reported a meeting Arbenz held with high-ranking government officials. In that meeting, the president stated that opposition to his agrarian reform would cause the masses to “make their discontent manifest by attacking the capitalistic classes creating thus a civil war for which the government would not be held responsible.” Colonel Díaz, who attended the meeting, supported Arbenz, though he cautioned that the Army “would not tolerate any demonstrations that might lead to a civil war, a possibility which the Armed Forces were ready to stamp out even before it begins.” Arbenz mentioned the possibility of civil war in Guatemala three times during the meeting.51 McAdam’s dispatch drew the attention of both the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Caribbean Command, both of which widely circulated his dispatch a couple of months later.52 McAdam was correct about the uneasiness of the senior military leadership about the possibility of civil war in the countryside.

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The military had the role of keeping the rural areas peaceful. Arbenz’s statements, which warned of civil war, alarmed senior officers like Díaz, who were not willing to tolerate rural unrest. McAdam’s use of informants, though, illustrated the larger problem about informants. Informants were (with rare exceptions) anti-Arbenz. The sources reported information that the attachés and embassy officers wanted to hear, namely that Arbenz was a dangerous radical who was opposed by the military and civilians. For example, of the four hundred attaché reports filed between 1952 and 1954, only five came from a pro-Arbenz informant. Officers disgruntled with Arbenz often volunteered information to attaches, making sure they did so in English. Using informants was perhaps not the most reliable way to obtain credible information. Attachés could rely on informants to come to them with information rather than going out, doing hard work, and getting it themselves. Most, if not all informants spoke English, making mastery of Spanish unnecessary on the attaché’s part. McCormick’s main civilian contacts were recent German immigrants who had large landholding interests and spoke English. McCormick is still friends with some of these families today. The majority of officers initially seemed apathetic about the president’s reform measures. When asked by the military attaches to comment on Decree 900, several admitted that they had not read it. The attachés attributed this indifference to officers taking the lead from Chief of the Army Díaz, who had supported the president in his execution of the agrarian reform. A key feature of Arbenz’s program was the obtaining of the military’s support, or at least its quiescence. The U.S. Army G–2, putting together the intelligence gathered by its attachés, noted that the Guatemalan Army has been treated very well in recent years and has been demonstrably loyal to Arbenz’s carrying out of agrarian reform.53 Indeed, U.S. News and World Report noted in February 1953, “the Army never had it so good as under Arbenz.”54 Arbenz gave military officers access to military commissaries where officers could buy goods with no import tax and thus at significantly lower prices. Predictably, officers purchased more than they needed and sold the surplus at a profit. Other perks included lucrative bureaucratic positions, travel allowances, and study overseas. Officers could use military personnel as domestic help, use free government transportation, utilize the military hospital for themselves and their families, and take advantage of free entertainment—officers clubs, dances, and bingo. Orchestras and marimba bands were even provided to the military. Arbenz was able to mollify the officers, or as the embassy put it, “coddled the Army to retain its loyalty.”55 Senior military officers profited immensely under Arbenz. Examples abound. Díaz acquired a home and finca near the national airport. Minister of Defense Colonel José Sánchez had three homes built, averaging between eighty thousand and one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Major Alfonzo Martínez, Chief of the Agrarian Department, had a large home in a plush suburb of Guatemala City and owned several Cadillacs. President Arbenz

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also profited, owning a large home in the Trivoli residential area of Guatemala City as well as a summer home near Iztapa, on the Pacific Coast.56 Major Chavez and Colonel McCormick reported accurately on Arbenz’s coddling of the military. Chavez, in his outbrief to the Air Force at the end of his tour, noted that the army commissary had imported so many modern stoves, electric refrigerators, and freezers that they could not possibly use them all and thus sold the excess to the public for a profit. McCormick, well aware of the perks that the Army received, concluded, “there have been no significant individual or group defections among officer personnel in the last year…for Arbenz has won the whole hearted support of the Army and the police.”57 There were other monetary issues at work. According to Chavez, officers had little stomach for revolt not only because of featherbedding and perks but also because jobs were scarce in the country. No officer wanted to lose his position. They also were reluctant to talk about their political opinions with their fellow officers because they knew that Arbenz was willing to pay two thousand to three thousand dollars for information about plots brewing in the military. Chavez concluded that life was good for the officer who kept quiet.58 Chavez and McCormick’s dispatches were also used in intelligence formulation at the highest levels of the U.S. government. The NIE of 1953, relying on such reports, concluded that “Arbenz has sought to enhance the morale [of the Army] through pay increases, additional allowances, quarters for many of the field grade officers, promotions every three years, duty free commissary privileges, and appointments to desirable government positions. Especially generous treatment has been provided for the officers of the two regiments stationed in Guatemala City.” On agrarian reform and the Army: “The Army could not be expected to take revolutionary action unless its leaders became convinced that their personal security and well-being were threatened by communist infiltration.” Agrarian reform would be achieved by destruction of “large landholders [and the subsequent mobilization] of the hitherto politically inert peasantry.” These quotes were taken verbatim from Chavez and McCormick’s dispatches and show that their reports had an impact on overall policy estimates.59 Policymakers would increasingly turn to these estimates for information as relations between the U.S. and Guatemala deteriorated in 1954.

ATTACHÉ CONTACT WITH OFFICERS IN ARBENZ’S INNER CIRCLE

One of the most significant challenges facing an American military attaché in Guatemala was establishing contact with those military officers close to Arbenz. As we have seen so far, some attaches received their information from informants or officers who were against Arbenz. Manuel Chavez, however, succeeded in establishing close relationships with Arbenz’s military advisors.

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The 1944 revolution brought a new dynamic to the officer corps. The overthrow of Federico Ponce was accomplished by “young” officers led by Arbenz and Francisco Arana. These officers had come together to strike against the old generals who had held power under President Jorge Ubico, kept him in power, helped to stifle all dissent, and in the view of the young officers, tried to fend off “progress” and “modernity.” After the October Revolution the generals were exiled from the country along with their leader, Ponce. Among the young officers who now controlled the military, two distinct groups were readily apparent, symbolized by Captain Arbenz and Major Arana.60 Through the Arévalo administration, both Arbenz and Arana consolidated their positions within the armed forces hoping to assume the Presidency in 1950 (under the Guatemalan Constitution, Arévalo could not succeed himself after his six year term). Arana, however, was so popular, especially among the upper class Guatemalans, that it was generally conceded that he would have been elected. Arana also had the support of line officers who made up the majority of Guatemalan Army officers. However, Arana overplayed his hand. In July 1949, with the backing of conservative landowners, he presented Arévalo with an ultimatum demanding that he surrender power to the Army and serve the remainder of his term as a civilian figurehead. The president turned to Arbenz to prevent the coup. Arbenz, with several loyal Polytechnic officers, attempted to have Arana arrested on a remote finca. Arana resisted arrest and was shot and killed.61 When news of the colonel’s death reached the capital, Aranista officers rebelled. The Army quickly crushed the rebellion. The upshot was the dismissal of many line officers. According to one estimate, over a quarter of all active officers, mostly non-polytechnicos, were relieved of their commands or dismissed from service. With the conservative Arana and his supporters out of the way, Arbenz was able to push though a series of radical reforms which alienated the privileged classes in Guatemala and drew the attention of the United States. Officers who had supported Arbenz after the murder of Arana were rewarded with high positions. Some of these men included Colonel Díaz, Colonel Sánchez, Minister of National Defense, Major Rogelio Cruz Wer, head of the Guardia Civil (rural police force), Colonel Luis Girón, Chief of the Air Force and Major Carlos Sarti, second in command of the Air Force.62 U.S. military attaches had mixed results when they tried to establish contacts with officers close to Arbenz. Major Chavez had excellent contacts with several of these officers, especially Girón and Sarti. Other attaches, however, were unable to establish any relationships and only had formal meetings with these officers. There was a marked decline in personal contacts with these officers after the departure of Chavez in June 1953. Chavez had the only close, consistent contact with officers within Arbenz’s inner circle. Several of his reports and personal recollections demonstrate that he was trusted and was able to obtain information other attachés could not. His meeting with Major Cruz Wer shows Chavez’s ability to establish

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contact with an officer who was not friendly to the United States. Cruz Wer, appointed by Arbenz as chief of the Guardia Civil, was put in charge of enforcing law and order in the countryside after the enactment of agrarian reform. The United States opposed agrarian reform because it felt that it destabilized the countryside and enabled communist elements to infiltrate the rural areas. Yet, Chavez was able to establish contact with Cruz Wer. His Air Intelligence Report of 11 March 1953 chronicled a long conversation with him. His is the only recorded attaché dispatch with the leader of the Rural Guard.63 Another important Chavez contact was Major Martínez, a close Arbenz confidante rumored to be involved in the assassination of Arana, and the head of the National Agrarian Department (DAN). Martínez was similar to Cruz Wer in his distrust of the U.S. Through his close contact with Martínez, Chavez was able to obtain information where other attachés had failed. A 31 July 1952 memorandum from Chavez illustrates this point. In a conversation with Chavez, Martínez admitted that he had “a large arsenal in his home consisting of twenty to twenty-five submachine guns, two hundred hand grenades, a large quantity of automatic pistols, and carbines, and a quantity of ammunition and several thousand rifles.” This is an extraordinary admission from an officer who opposed the United States.64 Chavez also had close relations with top Guatemalan Air Force officers, two of whom would go on to higher positions within the military and would be directly involved in the coup against Arbenz in June 1954–Colonel Girón, the Chief of the Air Force and his executive officer, Major Sarti. Over a number of years Chavez had forged friendships with both. Girón accompanied Chavez on several trips to the United States and Panama. He would let Girón and his fellow officers conduct radar approaches (radar was not available in Guatemala) into airfields in Panama and the United States. Captain José Luis Lemus, Operations Officer of the Guatemalan Air Force and future Chief of the Guatemalan Air Force, participated with Chavez in the search for a downed Cessna aircraft with three UFCO employees aboard. All these contacts enabled Chavez to build bonds of trust.65 But perhaps Chavez’s closest and most important contact was Major José Luis Cruz Salazar, one of the three members of the ruling junta after Arbenz’s overthrow. Cruz Salazar was G–2 of the Army when they first met in 1950 and their close friendship continued until the Guatemalan colonel died of prostate cancer in 1995.66 Chavez learned a great deal about the inner workings of the Guatemalan government from “Guicho.” Several of Chavez’s dispatches commenting on the government from “inside sources” no doubt came from Cruz Salazar.67 Chavez was not averse to asking favors from Cruz Salazar. An official in the Arbenz government was renting the house behind Chavez. On weekends, the official and his guests would conduct target practice against the dividing wall of the two houses. Concerned, Chavez called Cruz Salazar, who personally delivered a Thompson Sub-Machine gun from the Ministry

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of Defense for Chavez’s personal protection. Needless to say, the target practice stopped.68 A final example of a Chavez friend was the Minister of National Defense José Sánchez. An Arbenz supporter, he nonetheless lavishly praised Chavez. When the air attaché left Guatemala in 1953, Sánchez wrote the following letter to U.S. ambassador, Rudolf Schoenfeld: Mr. Ambassador, I have the honor of writing to you to express the satisfaction of this office for the manner in which Major Manuel Chavez has been performing his duties as Assistant Air Attaché to the Embassy under your command. During the time he has been here, Major Chavez has done an excellent job and has been responsible for the existence of the friendly relations which happily prevail between the Army of the United States and the Army of Guatemala. This office considers Major Chavez’s collaboration extraordinary as compared to that of the other assistant attachés who have been assigned to the Embassy, taking into consideration his knowledge of the Spanish language. /S/ José Angel Sánchez Seal of the Ministry of National Defense69

Other attachés were not able to establish as close a contact with proArbenz officers. Attachés such as McCormick received information mostly through news clippings and informants. For example, in a 9 October 1953 dispatch from McCormick to the Army, the attaché commented on Cruz Wer’s communist leanings, reporting on his presence at La Aurora Airport to welcome the delegates returning from the World Youth Festival for Peace and Friendship in Bucharest on 25 September and his hosting of a farewell dinner three days later. The guest list included Victor Manuel Gutiérrez, considered by the Embassy to be one of the leading communists in Guatemala. McCormick’s sources were “a reliable informant” and news clippings. McCormick did not follow up these observations with personal contact with Cruz Wer to determine why he attended these events.70 McCormick had a second chance to talk with Cruz Wer a month later at a military dance sponsored by the Guardia Civil—but did not.71 Why did McCormick fail to make contact with officers such as Cruz Wer? One obvious reason was his discomfort with Spanish. As he explained to the author in an interview, when he left language school, he thought he had mastered Spanish. The problem was that when he arrived in Guatemala he had a hard time understanding Guatemalans because in his words, they “spoke so fast.” This feeling of inadequacy caused McCormick to lean on Chavez, who spoke the language fluently. Chavez’s contacts with the Guatemalan military were based on friendships built on six to seven years of operating in the region. Guatemalan officers, especially officers such as Cruz Wer, were hesitant to strike up friendships with new gringos. As Chavez admitted to the

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author, “I had many personal friendships with Guatemalan officers that other attachés could not have.”72 While Chavez could help McCormick somewhat, interservice rivalry sometimes impeded cooperation. Each Service (Army, Navy, Air Force) competed with the others. There had been attempts in the Department of Defense to consolidate the intelligence collection of each of the services into one large organization. In the late 1940s, Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson had moved all the attaches under his office and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The services, objecting to this plan, were able to convince Johnson’s replacement to go back to the old system in 1951.73 The pressure to justify each service’s attaché bureau was intense and sometimes generated rivalry. This was sometimes the case in Guatemala. On this point, Chavez was in agreement: “while I tried to help (the other attaches) as much as possible, there was rivalry—like competition on who could get the scoop first. Sometimes we did not share information.”74 McCormick was more successful establishing contact with officers who were opposed to the Arbenz regime in part because this was an easier task. The attachés and embassy personnel had no difficulty finding officers who wanted to talk about their disgruntlement with the regime.75 One such officer was Elfego Monzón, former Minister of the Interior under Arévalo and minister without portfolio during the Arbenz administration. Monzón’s opposition to the Arbenz regime came to the attention of the attaches and the embassy in July 1951 when an associate close to Monzón informed the embassy that the officer opposed Arbenz’s agrarian reform and the increasing communist influence in the country.76 Monzón’s contacts with the attaches would accelerate in 1954 as the embassy became more involved in plotting a coup against Arbenz. Monzón would tell McCormick that he was “psychologically prepared to join the opposition and could count on approximately three hundred out of twelve hundred officers to join him in any opposition movement.”77 This information was quickly reported to the embassy. Another such officer was retired Colonel Roberto Barrios, who contacted the attaches and was bold enough to go directly to the U.S. State Department in Washington with his desire to overthrow the Arbenz regime. In his visit to the State Department, he claimed that he was “the leader of the anticommunist movement in Guatemala” which totaled “some 300,000 followers.” Barrios seemed to be prone to exaggeration as the population of Guatemala was around three million.78 The CIA operation to overthrow Arbenz did not “shift into high gear” until after Chavez’s departure in June 1953. With Chavez gone, the number of attaché reports and contacts with senior military officers declined. The CIA considered the Guatemalan Army critical to PBSUCCESS. The Agency was particularly interested in officers who would be willing to defect or overthrow Arbenz, but lacked sources. Army attaché McCormick and Air

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attaché Vernon Martin were unable to get close enough to senior Guatemalan officers to gain this information. Nicholas Cullather, a CIA historian who had privileged access to CIA records, states that the CIA, when it began indepth planning for the operation in mid-1953, was “shocked to learn that the CIA station in Guatemala had no penetrations of…the Armed Forces.” He goes on to note that without these contacts, the CIA could only speculate on the Army’s motives.79 The CIA’s post-coup assessment of the performance of the U.S. Army mission and military attaches was scathing. Frank Wisner, who ran the CIA operation from Washington, initially thought that the U.S. Army might have refused to cooperate on principle or out of reluctance to violate the military assistance agreement, which stated that the military mission would only train the Guatemalan Army, not gather intelligence. Yet, the opposite apparently was true. The military mission officers wanted to help but “didn’t know anything because they didn’t socialize with the Guatemalan officers.”80 The attachés, though they did socialize with the Guatemalan officers, were unable to provide information to the CIA that would have allowed them to get a better idea if certain Guatemalan officers were willing to turn on Arbenz.81 The attachés, however, were not totally to blame. Because there was not much coordination between the CIA station chief and McCormick, there was little communication. McCormick was particularly frustrated with the CIA station chief. In a letter to his superiors in the Pentagon dated 8 February 1954, he complained that since the arrival of new U.S. ambassador John Peurifoy, there had not been “normal coordination of [intelligence] collection activities.” This was apparent, he went on, because the CIA “operates in a small room between my office and my assistants and makes use of the Air attaché’s photo lab.” He went on to complain in the memorandum that he never had a full exchange of information with the CIA and had never seen any of his (the CIA station chief’s) reports, although he had access to all of McCormick’s. When McCormick confronted the CIA station chief directly, the latter replied that he was powerless to divulge information concerning operational activities. Nor did the agencies in Washington coordinate their activities much better. The operation, in the words of Richard Immerman, “took place with the utmost stealth. Only [President Dwight] Eisenhower, the [John Foster and Allen] Dulles brothers, and a few other top-level members of the White House, State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency knew that an operation was even being considered, let alone were privy to its details.”82 The Pentagon was not informed of the operation at all; its contribution consisted, in the words of CIA operative Richard Bissell, of “some military personnel who were on loan to the CIA—but this was a constant practice.”83 The lack of influence the Pentagon had on the situation in Guatemala explains the Army’s response to McCormick more than a month and a half later. They cautioned McCormick that “you need to inform CAS [CIA] that

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you are merely interested in knowing the content of his reports in so far as it pertains to DA [Department of the Army] interest and that you are not [emphasis in original] interested in how, where, or from whom he received the information. DA and the DCA would, in the near future, discuss ways to better coordinate information in the future.” In short, McCormick was not to pry in CIA matters.84 How valuable Chavez was to the overall collection effort in Guatemala is starkly illustrated by the CIA’s clandestine move to send Chavez back to Guatemala in May 1954. Chavez, having returned to the United States in mid-1953, worked as an intelligence officer at Air Defense Command, Colorado Springs, Colorado. From Colorado he was summoned to CIA headquarters in April where he was briefed by J.C.King, Director of the Western Hemisphere Division for Clandestine Operations. During the session, he was informed that the CIA was planning to start a revolt in Guatemala in order to oust Arbenz. King wanted Chavez to work with his staff to assist them in evaluating key figures within the Guatemalan military.85 Chavez asked why they had chosen him. King stated that they had analyzed his reports and compared them to the other attachés. Furthermore, Chavez knew what was going on and had valuable contacts among senior officers. King also stated that Chavez understood how to deal with the Latin Americans and could evaluate their response to this situation.86 King and his associates wanted Chavez to tell them all he knew about several key officers in the Guatemalan armed forces. Castillo Armas would be invading from bases in Central America, but the rebel leader needed support from defectors inside Guatemala once the operation started. Which officers respected Castillo and could be expected to join him? Would military units defect and join the operation? Would certain officers join the revolt if they were paid? Who could approach these officers to determine their stance? These were some of the questions CIA wanted Chavez to answer. They asked Chavez to make a special trip back to Guatemala to renew friendships with officers and obtain more information. It is striking that the CIA, only two months away from starting the coup, had to rely on Chavez, who had been out of the country for almost a year, for this kind of information. Apparently, McCormick and Martin could not supply the necessary information. This request underscores the effectiveness of Chavez as compared to the other attachés. Chavez flew to Guatemala City on 18 April and contacted several of his former Guatemalan officer friends, including Cruz Salazar and Girón. Chavez concluded that Cruz Salazar and his associates were anxious about the arms shipments from Eastern Europe, were wary of the motives of their president, and were not supportive of Castillo’s bid for power. Chavez, however, was unable to determine if Cruz Salazar would lead or participate in a coup—the information that King and his associates in Washington were interested in. This was the case also with Girón. And Chavez was hesitant to pry. As he confided to the author, “attachés obtain information by overt means and are

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not in the business of instigating coups, if that is done, it is the job of the CIA, not the attaché corps. I was very hesitant to push the issue with my friends.”87 Chavez contacted other officers but failed to set up an interview with Colonel Monzón. He made three attempts, but always, “no está disponible” (not available). Chavez concluded that Monzón was reluctant to be approached and was especially “leery of a gringo officer coming out of the blue to talk with him.”88 Chavez’s civilian friends were much less circumspect than Cruz Salazar, Girón, or Monzón. Among Chavez’s civilian contacts were Dr. Carlos Lara and Jesus Valenzuela (one of the owners of Klee Pharmacies of Guatemala), who asked “when are you Americans going to get rid of Arbenz?”89 In the end, Chavez went back to Washington discouraged and emptyhanded. He was able to report that there continued to be some serious doubts about Arbenz among the military and that some prominent businessmen wanted the U.S. to take action. But he did not get a definitive answer about whether certain officers were prepared to support a coup. CIA actions with Chavez highlight a number of problems with the attaché corps in Guatemala. The CIA had to rely on Chavez to determine the disposition of several key officers in Guatemala, sending him down on a special mission to make contact with Cruz Salazar, Girón, Sarti, and Monzón—all of whom would play a key role in the overthrow of Arbenz a few months later. Why did the CIA not rely on McCormick and Martin? The CIA had looked at all the attaché reports from Guatemala and determined that McCormick and Martin had not established close enough contact with key officers to be useful gatherers of intelligence for the PBSUCCESS planners. McCormick, Martin, and others were not close enough to Díaz, Sánchez, Cruz Salazar, Girón, or Sarti to be able to broach subjects such as defection. Nor did the CIA trust McCormick or Martin enough to keep them informed about PBSUCCESS plans. Maybe it was a matter of secrecy. Perhaps even more it was the perception that the attachés there were not capable or effective enough to help. The result was that by the time the invasion began, the CIA knew from Chavez that the Army was very apprehensive and disliked Arbenz but disliked Castillo Armas perhaps just as much (Cruz Salazar being one example). Certainly one of the motivations behind the officers’ desertion of Arbenz was the hope that one of them would become president. They also knew that officers close to Arbenz, such as Colonel Díaz and Major Cruz Wer, would probably support the president. But the CIA was unsure how the Army as a whole would respond to Castillo’s invasion. A 17 June analysis reveals the tentativeness of the CIA’s predictions: The political scene is dominated by President Arbenz, his advisors, and popular following… In a position to decide the political issue is the 6,000– man Guatemalan Army. This is a newly professionalized Army, proud of its military efficiency developed during the past ten years. Its officers and

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men enjoy numerous privileges granted by the Arbenz government. So far as the Army is concerned, its preferred choice unquestionably would be to keep Arbenz and dispose of his communist advisors. If the leaders of the officer corps could not persuade Arbenz to go along, they might carry off a coup and set up an Army regime as at least a stopgap. Or…they could exert their dominant power to the end of preventing a showdown with the U.S.90

The same day of this intelligence report was written, Castillo and his men advanced into Guatemala. At this point Chavez would have been indispensable to the embassy and the CIA in determining whether officers would oppose the invasion. Without Chavez, they had no sources in the military close to Arbenz or the leading figures in the Army. The uneasiness the CIA felt is reflected in a memo a few days after the invasion: As of 20 June the outcome of the efforts to overthrow…Arbenz… remains very much in doubt. The controlling factor in the situation is still considered to be the position of the Guatemalan armed forces, and thus far this group has not given any clear indication of whether it will move… The position of the top-ranking military officers is constantly shifting… It is probable that the rising pressure of events will compel this group to declare its position, one way or the other, at any time from now on— although the possible result could be a split in the ranks… The action of Colonel Castillo Armas is not in any sense a conventional military operation… The entire effort is thus more dependent upon psychological impact rather than actual military strength, although it is upon the ability of the Castillo Armas to create and maintain for a short time the impression of very substantial military strength that the success of this particular effort primarily depends… If the effort does not succeed in arousing the other latent forces of resistance within the next period of approximately twenty-four hours, it will probably begin to lose strength.91

Unbeknownst to the CIA and the U.S. embassy, the Guatemalan Army, who could have easily defeated Castillo Armas’ small band of invaders, was unwilling to destroy them because the military feared the possibility of a U.S. intervention. When senior Army officers, led by Díaz, Girón, and Sarti demanded that Arbenz step down on 27 June, the U.S. embassy was still reporting that the Army opposed Castillo’s invasion. The number of intelligence failures by the CIA and the attachés is striking. There were no attachés or military advisors in the field with the Guatemalan Army when the Army decided it would not oppose Castillo. There were no attachés who were privy to the decision by Sarti and others on 27 June to depose Arbenz. The presence of Chavez might have made a difference. He was close to Sarti and Girón, two of the officers who made the decision to overthrow Arbenz. The air attaché might have been able to tell the embassy days before that certain officers were ready to act against Arbenz.

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More importantly, though, the CIA would not have come away with the impression that their operation was, in the words of Nicholas Cullather, “an unblemished triumph…[that reinforced] the belief that covert action could be used as a convenient, decisive final resort.”92 The reality was that without Chavez, the CIA had little idea which way the Army would go once the invasion took place. They had no contacts close to Sarti, Girón, or Cruz Salazar, and no way to determine if Arbenz’s removal had been accomplished by a military coup or (as the CIA understood it) the success of Castillo’s invasion. The CIA came away from the operation more convinced than ever that covert operations would enable the U.S. to accomplish foreign policy objectives cheaply and effectively. *** What conclusions can be drawn from the attachés’ performance in Guatemala from 1950–1954? First, attachés did well when limited to strictly military reporting. The air attaches continued to perform air route surveys and to report on the condition of the few planes in the air force. McCormick’s dispatches effectively portrayed the readiness of the Army. The attaches and embassy routinely and conscientiously chronicled information available through open sources such as newspapers and magazines. Attachés effectively cultivated their limited networks of military and civilian informants. Attaches knew quite a bit about the attitudes of officers who opposed Arbenz and about general attitudes towards the president’s regime. They were also well attuned to trends in the Army, including the perks officers received from Arbenz in return for their acquiescence in his agrarian reforms. There was a definite bias in the informant information, which did not go unrecognized by the attachés. They also recognized that the information was skewed against Arbenz. Where attachés failed was in establishing deep personal relations with Guatemalan officers who were instrumental in the Arbenz overthrow of June 1954. Chavez was, of course, the exception. But because of the standard rotation policy, he left Guatemala in June 1953, exposing a gaping hole in the intelligence collection effort of the United States. In the year leading up to the coup, the CIA had no contacts with military officers who were close to Arbenz. Desperate, the CIA had to call Chavez back to duty to discover where key officers stood. Chavez’s trip failed in part because he was unable to gain such sensitive information on such short notice. McCormick, Martin, McAdam, and other attachés tried their best. However, they lacked the skills necessary to succeed in the demanding intelligence environment of Guatemala between 1950–1954. Chavez had what it took to be successful, but he had left too early to make a difference.

CHAPTER FOUR

U.S. Attachés and the Cuban Revolution, 1952–1958

On New Years Day, 1959, Fidel Castro overthrew Cuban President Fulgencio Batista. On taking power, Castro launched a revolution that challenged major U.S. interests on the island, including mob-run casinos, U.S. military missions, and investments worth many millions of dollars. Castro decried U.S. hegemony and Cuban dependency and vowed to restructure economic and political life to reduce U.S. influence, which had grown exponentially since the turn of the century. In 1960, relations between the two countries deteriorated rapidly after the U.S. imposed trade sanctions on the island. The Cubans increasingly turned to the Soviet Union, which became Castro’s economic and military partner. In January 1961, the United States broke relations with Castro when the Cubans ensconced themselves firmly in the Soviet orbit. During the 1960 presidential campaign, Senator John F. Kennedy accused the Eisenhower administration of “losing” Cuba. “Cuba,” he said in Cincinnati on 6 October of that year, was a “glaring failure of American foreign policy…it was our own policies,” the young Democrat continued, “not Castro’s, that first began to turn our former good neighbors against us.”1 After four decades, most scholars who write on Cuban-American relations still accept Kennedy’s argument that the U.S. would not have lost Cuba to Castro had it followed a more coherent policy towards Batista during the 1950s. These writers imply that if Eisenhower had paid more attention to Cuba and had acted to ease Batista out of office in 1957 or 1958, then the Cuban people would not have been subjected to over four decades of communist dictatorship. As Robert McMahon writes, “the verdict of much recent scholarship on Cuban-American relations,” is that U.S. policy toward Cuba was “rash, poorly planned, and ultimately counterproductive.”2 77

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HISTORIOGRAPHY AND ATTACHÉ MEASUREMENT CRITERIA

Batista’s fall was in part predicated on an erosion of his military’s effectiveness. Starting in 1957, the Cuban Army began to steadily lose strength vis a vis Castro’s. By the time Castro’s forces marched on Havana in late December 1958, Batista’s army had collapsed and its leaders were preparing to leave the country with the president. The question that naturally arises is why an army that numbered over thirty thousand failed to defeat Castro’s guerrillas, which never exceeded a thousand. Scholars who have studied Batista’s military agree that there were several important reasons why Batista’s army lost. In his book, Army Politics in Cuba, Louis Pérez attributes the failure of Batista’s military to incompetent senior officer leadership and the Army’s failure to adequately train for the type of guerrilla warfare it faced against Castro. When Batista assumed the presidency by a military golpe in early 1952, he purged the officer corps and installed older, retired officers loyal to him. Aside from their incompetence in military matters, the senior officers became co-conspirators with the president, notably in graft and patronage. Since senior officers were primarily interested in self-enrichment, army readiness suffered.3 According to Pérez, Batista’s army, armed and supplied primarily by the United States, was much better prepared militarily for an invasion from the Soviet Union than for an internal guerrilla threat. United States aid, provided through the Military Aid and Development Program (MADP), consisted of tanks, aircraft, and warships, and the requisite training in the U.S. to operate this equipment. When faced with a threat from Castro and the need to root him out of his mountainous headquarters in the Sierra Maestra, the Cuban Army was woefully unprepared. The failure of Batista’s army to defeat Castro during Operation Verano confirms his army’s inadequacy against the guerrillas.4 Authors such as Rafael Fermoselle and Hugh Thomas, among others, agree with Pérez’s arguments regarding senior officer leadership and the inadequacy of Army preparation for guerrilla warfare. These authors also attribute the Army’s failure to a purging of the junior officer corps. After the junior officers’ champion, Colonel Ramón Barquín, failed to remove Batista in a mid-1956 golpe, the dictator purged over fifty percent of the junior officer corps. These officers, unlike their senior commanders, were competent, well trained (many had received instruction in the United States) and for the most part free of corruption. Historians have speculated that if Batista had not purged these junior officers, they might have made the difference and defeated Castro in 1957 or 1958. These historians’ speculations are borne out, in part, by the professionalism and bravery displayed by junior officers during Operation Verano in the summer of 1958, where despite the rapid deterioration of the Cuban Army, they nearly defeated Castro.5 Finally, these historians stress that the arms embargo the U.S. placed on Cuba in 1957 was just as important as officer competence and training in explaining the Army’s failure. The U.S. placed an embargo on all arms going

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into Cuba as a result of Batista’s increasing corruption and his use of MADP aid against his internal enemies. As Louis Pérez has noted, the embargo did more psychological damage to the Cuban leadership than actual harm in a materiel sense. “Politically the embargo was tantamount to a withdrawal of American support,” he noted, “for it shattered whatever moral support existed for the Army in the belief that the United States endorsed the government campaign.” Batista and his army could easily obtain weapons and equipment from Britain, the Dominican Republic, and Italy but the loss of moral support was irreparable. In Batista’s words, the embargo “weakened the faith and will to fight of our men.”6 This chapter will measure the awareness attachés had of the trends historians cite to explain the Army’s failure. Examining whether or not attachés reported on senior officers’ incompetence, the impact of junior officer purges, their unpreparedness for guerrilla warfare, and the psychological effects of the U.S. embargo will measure how accurately attachés reported to their superiors in Washington—Tier I of Holley’s model. Questions of attaché reporting on Army effectiveness are also important because theoretically, if Eisenhower had been given sufficient warning of Batista’s military weakness, a policy might have been implemented to support alternatives to the dictator, which would have thwarted Castro. A coherent policy might have then emerged from the White House. From 1954 to 1958, U.S. military attachés stationed at the U.S. embassy reported to their superiors at the embassy and the Pentagon that the Cuban military was ineffective. However, attaches measured ineffectiveness as the ability to help the United States defend the hemisphere against a Soviet attack. They did not consider the possibility of a guerrilla insurgency in their calculations. Nor did the attachés’ superiors in the embassy or the Pentagon require them to report on the guerrilla threat. Washington and the U.S. embassy seemed satisfied with military assessments based on the hemispheric defense model. Most observers in Cuba did not take the Castro insurgency seriously. Cuba seemed thriving. To Americans, the island was more a tropical paradise than an island that could succumb to a rebel insurgency. Havana’s luxury and vacation-like atmosphere dulled the attachés’ sense of danger, both literally and figuratively. Attachés also clearly recognized the dichotomy between the senior and junior officer corps in Cuba. Attaches reported to their superiors that U.S. MADP support of the Cuban military enhanced the junior officer corps. By virtue of their advanced instruction at schools in the United States and participation in joint U.S.-Cuban military endeavors, they had attained a level of professional expertise unparalleled in their history. These were the same junior officers who would be purged by Batista as a result of Barquín’s failed golpe. The attachés were quite accurate in gauging the impact of the purge. The incompetent senior officers and those junior officers who supported their corrupt superiors remained. The competent were forced out. Attachés predicted that Cuban military preparedness would suffer—which it did.

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Despite the erosion in combat readiness because of the purge, orders from the Pentagon were clear: continue to support the senior officers. The Eisenhower administration saw the senior officers as ballast against communism. The U.S. embrace of corrupt senior officers did not reflect a value judgment in favor of corruption (senior officers) over virtue (junior officers). It represented instead a cold-blooded calculation: that dictatorial regimes and their armed service counterparts would be more effectively anticommunist than other types of governance, including democratic systems with corrupt-free militaries. Attachés recognized the seeming contradiction of U.S. policy. Continued support for corrupt officers would cause further erosion of combat readiness. But the guidance from their superiors was clear. The attachés reported what they saw and did not become advocates for an alternative policy. This was not the case, however, with the arms embargo. The embargo, promulgated by the State Department in 1957, had the conditional approval of Secretary Dulles. Eisenhower did not concern himself with the policy, considering it a minor matter. Meant to be temporary in nature, the arms embargo was designed to persuade Batista to reform his corrupt regime and conduct free and open elections. The ultimate aim was to ease the dictator out of office. As the arms embargo dragged on into 1958, attachés began to recognize the psychological damage the embargo was having on the Cuban military. In contrast to their acquiescence in the U.S. policy that supported senior officers over junior ones, the attachés became advocates for reversing the embargo. Instead of supporting the State Department’s embargo and helping to look for alternatives to Batista, the attachés swung their support fully behind the Cuban military. This action helped to undermine U.S. policy towards the island nation. The attachés’ actions also started a bureaucratic war between the State Department and the Pentagon. The former insisted on keeping the arms embargo in place while the latter demanded its end. As a result, U.S. policy was paralyzed in the critical period from late 1957 to the middle of 1958 when Batista might have been eased out of power and a U.S.-friendly alternative found. However, neither the State Department nor the Pentagon could agree on who would be an acceptable alternative. Because of more pressing international matters, Eisenhower did not intervene. He allowed the bureaucratic infighting to continue until it was too late to find an alternative to Castro. *** THE CUBAN OFFICER CORPS—JUNIOR AND SENIOR OFFICERS

A central goal of U.S. policy under the administration of Dwight Eisenhower was to foster and strengthen anticommunist regimes in Latin America. The implication of the president’s plan was a new defense arrangement tying selected Latin American countries more closely to the U.S. military. The MADP

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of 1952 called for the exchange of military equipment and services in return for Latin American promises to expand defense capacities, to send strategic materials to the U.S., and to restrict trade with the Soviet Bloc.7 Cuba, because of its geographic proximity and historical relationship with the United States, was one of the first countries in the region to receive increased aid under the MADP. An encouraging aspect of the Cuban MADP was the enhanced development of its junior military officer corps. By virtue of their advanced instruction at schools in the United States and participation in U.S.-Cuban joint military endeavors, they attained a level of professional expertise unparalleled in their history. Faced with the traditional involvement of Latin American officers in the politics of their countries, U.S. policymakers strove to change this Latin custom and instill a professional model in the ethical framework of the Latin American officer corps.8 This was especially true in nations that were considered of vital interest. Cuba unquestionably fell into the category of a vital interest, since the United States had strong economic ties to the island that antedated the U.S. military intervention of 1898. Beginning with the 1898–1934 U.S. protectorate and continuing into the 1950s, the Cuban military was heavily involved in political affairs. From Cuba’s inception as a U.S. satellite, the army passed under the command of officers appointed for their political predilections rather than their military competence. Consequently, the armed forces emerged as simply another arena in which competing political factions played out their schemes for national hegemony.9 Arthur Gardner, United States ambassador to Cuba from 1951–53, complained in a memo to the Department of State that the Cuban military was not a non-political force in the country but “a force full of jealousies and distrust” involved in the promotion of graft in the government.10 The increase in U.S. military aid, schooling, and joint training of the Cuban Armed Forces in the 1940s and 1950s was designed, in part, to change the historic role that the Cuban military had played in political affairs. It was hoped that a new generation of U.S.-trained Cuban officers would inculcate the professional ethic and spark a gradual withdrawal from the political scene. Moreover, it was hoped that U.S. instruction would have the positive effect of enhancing the defense capabilities of the Cuban armed forces. U.S. training certainly benefited the Cuban military. Many Cuban officers, as well as soldiers, airmen, and sailors attended military schools in the United States or trained with U.S. forces between 1945 and 1954. In this ten-year span, the United States organized instruction for over five hundred Cuban officers at service institutions in the Panama Canal Zone or at military bases in the United States.11 Examples abound. In the period 1952–1954 alone, 38 Cuban Army, 171 Navy, and 211 Air Force personnel received training in the United States under the military aid program.12 In June 1952, Cuban pilots made a total of 274 landings and takeoffs on both land and water and were tutored in antisubmarine bombing at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.13 In May of

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that same year, the Cuban and United States Air Force set up a flying training course that involved schooling in both the U.S. and Cuba. Twenty-three cadets alone were in this preliminary program in May of that year.14 Joint training was extensive and varied throughout the period. In 1953, for example, the Cuban Navy ship 20 de Mayo trained with the United States Navy at Norfolk, Virginia, to augment the effectiveness of sea patrols.15 In January 1954, the Cuban Army Air Force, under supervision of USAF personnel, executed aerial exercises at San Julian Air Base in Pinar del Rio Province using F–47 aircraft newly acquired from the U.S. Air Force.16 Schooling in the United States was supplemented by training in other foreign educational institutions such as Mexico’s Escuela Militar Superior and for the more senior officers, colleges in Europe.17 Colonel Ramón Barquín, leader of the Puro officers, was an example of this training: graduate of the Cuban Military Academy, the General Staff and War College of Mexico, the U.S. Army War College, delegate to the Inter-American Defense Board, and recipient of the American Legion of Honor.18 In fiscal year 1953, Cuba received half a million dollars in military aid; in 1954, 1.1 million dollars; in 1955, 1.6 million and in 1956, 1.7 million.19 Support was enlarged to 3 million dollars per year by 1958.20 As a whole, aid to Cuba was not that large compared to that given to other Latin American countries during the same period (1952–1962), ranking ninth behind Uruguay and Ecuador.21 United States assistance proved to be only a small part of the overall Cuban military budget, totaling just two million dollars out of a total of 55.3 million dollars, to cite fiscal year 1957 as an example.22 Materiel consisted mostly of rebuilt aircraft and spare parts, ammunition, and training support items,23 while the majority of weapons and aircraft were purchased directly by Cuba and not a part of aid.24 Aside from the U.S., the Cubans bought military equipment from Switzerland, Great Britain, Canada, Italy, and the Dominican Republic. These purchases continued even after the United States arms embargo of Cuba began in 1957.25 U.S. military attaches were well aware of the quality of Cuba’s junior officers during the 1950s and reported their competence to their superiors in the embassy and the Pentagon. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Treadway, Army attaché from 1955 to 1958, regularly praised Cuba’s junior officers. Treadway was not, however, a Latin American area specialist. He came to Cuba from an assignment with the Inspector General in Washington, D.C. His wife, in an interview with the author, stated that he was offered three different assignments in Latin America. Because Cuba was one, they “jumped at the chance” to go there, considering it an ideal assignment. It was “payback,” she stated, “for the many years that he had been assigned to overseas assignments, especially in the Pacific.”26 He came to Cuba with six months of Spanish instruction at the Army language school in Monterrey. His wife thought him proficient, claiming, “he could give a speech in Spanish to a crowd in Cuba after his six months of

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instruction.”27 While Treadway was probably a fast learner and had basic proficiency, he still was not completely fluent. However, the ability to speak Spanish in Cuba did not seem to bring the “value added” for intelligence gathering that it did, for example, in Guatemala. As a former Cuban officer explained to the author, “it was not necessary for the attachés to speak Spanish in Cuba. All Cuban officers routinely spoke English to the American attachés. If one of us could not speak English, there was always an officer nearby who could quickly function as a translator.” The former Cuban officer judged Treadway’s Spanish to be passable, but noted that “we routinely translated for him.”28 Despite his lack of Spanish proficiency, Treadway strove to get out and report on the Cuban Army. Through his reporting, he was able to surmise that U.S. training had a direct and significant impact on the Cuban junior officer corps. The interview with 2nd Lieutenant Llerena underscores this impact. The Army attaché, along with William Caldwell, the U.S. embassy’s political attaché, interviewed the Cuban junior officer in Santiago in February 1958. This officer was in charge of a garrison located near the city and had, a year earlier, attended training at Fort Gulick, Panama. Llerena praised the training and treatment he had received and was grateful for the opportunity to know and understand the United States. He also made several pointed suggestions to Caldwell, urging the U.S. to expand the opportunities for young Cuban officers to attend courses in the United States, limit training to personnel under thirty-five, and increase U.S. financial aid to these programs. If the lieutenant was in fact a typical young officer, the maturity he showed to a high ranking senior U.S. representative shows that the Cuban junior officer corps was a strong and viable group. Treadway’s recounting of a story concerning Llerena offers encouraging evidence that he and his peers were beginning to embrace an ethic of professionalism and selfless service. Shortly before the Army colonel’s visit, the mill owner, whose property the lieutenant’s unit was protecting from Castro’s guerrillas, had offered to pay the costs for the officer’s spouse so that she might spend a few days with him. Llerena declined on moral grounds even though his commander and other higher-ranking officers had their wives in the vicinity, a violation of regulations. He wanted, according to Caldwell, to “set an example for his men, many of whom were also married and had not seen their wives for six months.”29 Llerena, idealistic and U.S. trained, practiced selfless service and put his men’s requirements before his own. He and his other youthful officers were the future of the Cuban Army. Colonel Fred Keller, head of the military training mission in Cuba from 1957–1959, shared this appraisal. He found that Cuban leaders at the battalion and company levels, particularly those trained in the United States and Cuba under the military assistance program, managed their units conscientiously.30 He also lauded the qualifications of the Cuban Army Air Force pilots and technicians.31

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Cuba’s junior military officers had close relationships with Treadway and the other military attaches. Many, indeed, had made their convictions concerning their superiors clear to the attaches. Attaché dispatches from 1953 up to the end of 1958 contain many observations on the military predicament in Cuba, noting widespread discontent with the dissoluteness of the senior leadership.32 For example, naval attaché Lionel Krisel was able to visit military facilities in Cuba and converse candidly with Cuban junior officers. In February 1953, he visited several naval installations in the vicinity of Havana and was able to discuss many matters with Cuban naval officers and witness these leaders at work and at social gatherings. In conversations with these officers, many of whom had extensive U.S. naval instruction, he found widespread disappointment with the leadership of the Cuban Navy.33 Krisel would tell this author that he had great respect for junior naval officers in Cuba. “They were very competent,” he stated, because “we [the United States] were really building up in the country a cadre of junior officers who were pro-U.S. and had been trained by the U.S.” His opinion of senior officers was another matter: he found these officers “incompetent and mostly political types.” 34 In April 1954, Treadway was informed by a junior army officer that the replacement of a regimental commander with Batista “cronies” was having detrimental consequences on the morale of his colleagues. Many commanders lacked “sufficient background” for their positions because of their unearned and rapid rise in rank. Most had failed to perform their duties properly.35 Both Krisel and Treadway regretted that U.S.-trained junior officers were often purposely overlooked for promotion or advancement. Treadway, in a dispatch to the Pentagon, noted that “Batista has taken a very dim view of these [junior] officers because many of them have returned to Cuba after witnessing just how a democratic armed forces free of graft and influence operated.”36 Howard Slaton, the air attaché from 1954–1957, seconded Treadway’s observation, noting that the opinion among senior officers was to “leave the boys down on the farm—keep them in Cuba” rather than send them to U.S. schools for training.37 The message these junior officers continued to convey to the attachés throughout the 1950s was their disgust with the corruption and incompetence of their senior officers. Indeed, many senior officers had little interest in anything but their own self-enrichment. When Batista seized control of the government on 10 March 1952, he installed old comrades, long since retired, to positions of authority within the military. All were given back pay for the years between their departure and their reinstatement.38 Patronage was rampant in the determination of positions; seasoning or time in service was irrelevant. General Francisco Tabernilla, Chief of the Army, established a group of senior officers loyal to him and brought his sons back from retirement, promising them important positions. Francisco, his eldest son, was given command of the mixed tank regiment while Carlos became Chief of the Army Air Force. The general’s youngest son, Marcelo,

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was commissioned commander of the bomber squadron.39 Later, the head of Regiment Three (Las Villas) would be Tabernilla’s brother-in-law and leader of Regiment Seven (La Cabaña) Batista’s brother-in-law.40 Illustrations of such nepotism were not atypical. Corruption was pervasive under Batista. Regimental commanders were given control of the illegal lottery (bolita) in the interior. They were obligated to give fifteen thousand dollars a month to the regime but were authorized to keep the rest. Batista gave the illegal gambling concession for a particular Havana cabaret to his brother-in-law, the regimental commander at La Cabaña. Senior officers also operated houses of prostitution within their district.41 Cuban commercial cargo airplanes were allowed to operate between Miami and an airstrip at Camp Colombia where these officers bought expensive American made commodities such as televisions and refrigerators without paying custom duties. The distributors of these goods were said to be channeling kickbacks to the Tabernilla family.42 Colonel Pérez Coujil, another close confidante of the Tabernilla family, acquired a mansion less than five months after his promotion from lieutenant to full colonel.43 Hugh Thomas’ portrayal of General Alberto del Rio Chaviano is indicative of many Cuban senior officers. As regimental commander in Santiago, Chaviano administered that city’s gambling and protection racket. A major who served under him depicted his command as “daily drunken orgies in the barracks.”44 The general profited greatly from these illegal businesses. Captain Krisel, in incidental discussions with Cuban naval officers, was advised that numerous witnesses had seen persons in civilian attire who resembled gangsters visiting the Santiago headquarters.45 The loot confiscated from former elder military officers by Castro in 1959 gives some idea of the widespread graft. Batista’s losses included over twenty thousand dollars in cash, bonds, and jewels, General Tabernilla, eight hundred thousand dollars, and Major General Rojas González over two million dollars. Over thirty senior officers had an aggregate of more than twenty-four million dollars of property confiscated,46 not including the wealth that Batista and others transferred from the country and invested in Florida property or deposited in United States and Swiss commercial banks.47 Obviously, Batista’s officer-cronies had different priorities than running a professional army. Attachés were aware of this situation. According to a confidential memorandum submitted by the attachés through the embassy, the great majority of senior officers had little training for their duties. If not involved in graft and corruption, they had risen so fast in rank after Batista’s takeover that they were clearly well beyond their capabilities and competence. The Cuban military, in their words, “suffered immensely from the lack of leadership at the top levels of the military.”48 Enlisted soldier training suffered as well. They served their graft-ridden superiors rather than concentrating on military concerns. Sailors labored in customs houses, soldiers ran the administration in municipal alcaldes, as well

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as the numerous brothels controlled by their regimental leaders. The Army even operated the Cuban Immigration Service.49 All this graft and corruption was bound to affect the combat readiness of the Cuban military. When asked to determine the overall readiness of the Cuban Army, attachés were less than complimentary. In 1955 for example, Treadway witnessed an artillery firing practice held by the graduating officers of the artillery officers’ course. The attaché called the demonstration “disillusioning.” Few rounds hit the target and the mishandling of powder bags nearly caused an accidental explosion. Despite the hours the Cubans put into the demonstration, Treadway stated flatly, “the Cuban Army could not now or at any time in the foreseeable future participate in combat operations involving external forces.”50 A basic intelligence study of the Cuban military compiled by the U.S. Army Caribbean Command (with the assistance of Treadway) held the same view. The training was given to prepare the Army for maintenance of domestic order and was adequate for that purpose but inadequate for modern combat. Units larger than one hundred seldom conducted field maneuvers and would not be able to prevent a large scale outside invasion.51 The JCS concurred, noting that Cuba, along with its Central American neighbors, were far below U.S. standards. U.S. military aid, while effective in some cases, had “failed to produce a single unit capable of fulfilling its assigned mission in defense of the Western Hemisphere.”52 The reasons for the comments certainly stemmed from senior officer incompetence and the dim view Americans held of all officers who had not attended U.S. schools. Nevertheless, the attachés and their superiors based their assessments on the ability of the Cuban armed forces to help defend the hemisphere against a Soviet attack. In theory, the Cuban military would be part of a network of Latin American countries who would be called upon to not only defend their own country from a Soviet or Soviet client invasion but also help defend strategic points in the hemisphere. In various scenarios, the Cuban military would be used to defend the Canal Zone or Caribbean shipping lanes if the United States military was engaged in Europe or the Pacific. When attachés were asked to evaluate the military, they based their assessments primarily on a Soviet type attack. In terms of the MADP, training and equipment would also be provided to defend against this threat.53 Clearly, the Cubans were unable to defend against these attacks. In a State Department memorandum, the authors noted that aid to the Cuban military rested on the concept that their ground forces would assist in the defense of the Canal. The authors, though, questioned whether it was “really the desire or intent of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff to use Cuban forces for this [or any other] purpose.” The answer was clearly no.54 The attachés also acknowledged this reality. As Commander Krisel noted, the “idea that the Cuban Navy would assist the U.S. Navy in its defense responsibilities was ridiculous. Many of the attachés understood this.”55 But no alternative standard to evaluate the Cuban military was given to the attachés. A continued fixation on the hemispheric defense model blinded

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the attachés to looking more closely at the abilities of the Cuban military to turn back an internal insurgency or guerrilla-type movement. At no time between 1952 and 1957 did attaches consider the guerrilla threat when making assessments of the Cuban military. The attachés’ superiors in the Pentagon seemed to be satisfied with the information they were receiving. On Treadway’s report that the Cuban military lacked the training to stem an external invasion, Army intelligence evaluators wrote: “this is an extremely valuable dispatch which gives us a realistic evaluation on what training needs to be accomplished in order for their military to assist in defense of the hemisphere.” On a June 1957 evaluation which noted the same information: “this is a fine report and extremely useful to us.”56 Treadway, Krisel, and others were not given any signals from their superiors that they wanted an evaluation of the Cuban Army’s ability to repel a guerrilla insurgency; thus they did not pay attention to that possibility. There was also very little sense that there was any danger from Castro. When Castro began his insurgency in 1957, Cubans enjoyed the highest standard of living in Latin America; they owned more television sets, vehicles, and telephones than any other country in Latin America. Cuba was just behind Venezuela in per capita income and right near the top in medical care and literacy.57 Havana was a prime vacation destination. Batista in the 1950s vigorously promoted tourism. Some three hundred thousand tourists flocked to Cuba each year to enjoy Cuba’s bustling life of outdoor bars, nightclubs, brothels, and casinos. North Americans took the ferry or an inexpensive Pan American flight from Miami to Havana, a city with a population of over one million. Havana nightclubs featured U.S. performers such as Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley and drew sold out American audiences. The Tropicana was one of the most lavish, featuring exotic tree dancing and scantily clad Caribbean dancers.58 Naval attaché Krisel compared being stationed in Cuba in the 1950s to being sent to Australia today. “There was very little perceived threat,” he noted. “Some of my fellow attaches got in trouble with the alcohol, ladies, and the nightlife. It could definitely distract you from your job.”59 Air attaché Slaton stated that when informed that he and his wife would be assigned to Cuba, he thought it “manna from heaven…you couldn’t have asked for a better spot.”60 Added to the tourist atmosphere was the endless cocktail circuit—the nightly parties attachés and those members of the embassy staff were expected to attend. Captain Phillip Klepak, naval attaché from 1958 to 1960, described the parties as “incredible. There would be about five to seven parties per night, period. And they did it all by the numbers. It was so boring. The same people would be there. It was horrendous. It corrupted many attachés and the wives became drunks.” Life for an attaché could easily become one of nightly attendance at parties (which often ended well after midnight) and days spent recovering from an alcoholic stupor.

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All of this distracting activity—the vacation atmosphere and the embassy parties—numbed the attachés to the danger that the regime might be in danger. Exploring the possibility that a guerrilla type insurgency might succeed was not a top priority for the attachés, or much of a concern. As Klepak would confide later, “we didn’t take Castro seriously and certainly some of my drunk attaché friends forgot some of the time who Castro was.”61 Overall, the attachés “got it right” and correctly evaluated the Cuban Army, but used the wrong criteria. The Pentagon was not interested in the possibility that the Cuban Army might face a communist guerrilla insurgency. There was no reward in reporting this to superiors. The robust economy and vacation-like atmosphere of Havana did not make Cuba appear vulnerable to overthrow. In 1956 and 1957 Castro was not taken seriously. The good times would go on forever—or at least that is what the attachés thought. It seemed clear to the attachés, though, that in order for the Cuban Army to improve its readiness for hemispheric defense, U.S. trained and other competent officers would have to replace those in charge. The question was whether the attachés should push for this change, or if they even wanted to do so. Despite the high-mindedness of attempting to build up a Cuban officer corps free from graft and political intrigue, it is important to realize that this goal was never really central to U.S. policy in Latin America in the 1950s. The United States’ primary goal was to foster and strengthen anticommunist regimes in Latin America. “Do nothing to offend the dictators,” Eisenhower’s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles instructed U.S. diplomats throughout the region; “they are the only people we can depend on.”62 In the cause of anticommunism, the Eisenhower administration nurtured exceptionally close relations with Batista during the mid to late 1950s. The consummate expression of this policy came in 1955, when Vice President Richard M.Nixon offered a toast to the dictator and compared him to Abraham Lincoln.63 As Cold War perceptions hardened in Washington, the United States increasingly emphasized ties with Latin American military establishments. As President Eisenhower argued, apparently with reference to a potential conventional war, it was important to strengthen armed forces throughout the region because we “can’t defend South America if this communist war starts.”64 Central to these greater military ties was an emphasis on improving relations with senior military officers. As U.S. Army Chief of Staff J.Lawton Collins explained, “the Latin American officers who work with us and some of whom come to this country and see what we have and what we can do are frequently our most useful friends in those countries.”65 General Collins’ statement supporting Latin America’s senior officers was a clear signal to the attachés that good relations with these officers were to be encouraged and fostered. The civilian representatives in the embassy were aware of the inherent contradictions of U.S. policy. Willard Beaulac, the United States Ambassador to Cuba early in the first Eisenhower administration, was sympathetic to the

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junior officers. He forewarned his superiors in Washington very early in the Batista regime of the potential aftereffect of so openly championing a praetorian military command. Improving the Cuban military, he thought, would be a forbidding or impossible task because of the mistrust that U.S. support of senior officers had sown in the armed forces. Actions such as the exchange of decorations among senior military officers of the two nations gave subordinates the perception that the United States accepted the military and political status quo.66 An appointee of President Harry Truman, Ambassador Beaulac viewed Cuba from a different perspective than his new bosses in Washington. Truman’s reaction to the Cold War in Latin America, shared by Beaulac, was different from Eisenhower’s. The Truman administration, up to 1951–2, had made relatively realistic assessments of the threat communism posed to the region. A national security memorandum written in 1950 observed that “communism in the Americas is a potential danger, but that, with a few possible exceptions, is not seriously dangerous at the present time.” Under these conditions, the document warned, the United States should be concerned about the counterproductive consequences of authoritarian rule.67 Another assessment of Latin America appeared in a 1950 article in the journal Foreign Affairs by State Department specialist Louis Halle, writing under the pseudonym “Y.” Seeking to explain the persistence of corruption within the military and government, Halle argued that the historical record in Latin America showed a long-term trend toward democracy and argued that the United States should contribute to this process by cultivating partnership with Latin American nations, according them respect and economic assistance.68 Beaulac’s thinking, then, harmonized with Truman’s foreign policy. Seeking to correct what Halle called “the propensity of Latin American countries to follow a tradition of political behavior marked by intemperance, intransigence, flamboyance, and the worship of strong men,”69 Beaulac’s assessment of the detrimental effects of U.S. actions made sense. Beaulac felt that furthering democracy within Cuba would require a thorough reform of the Cuban government and military. The U.S. propensity to reward those in power, especially the generals, served to perpetuate an already corrupt regime. Nevertheless, U.S. policy was beginning to change even before Beaulac’s memorandum was written. Electoral politics raised concern about communist threats within the hemisphere. During the 1952 campaign for president, Eisenhower accused the Truman administration of ignoring Latin America and creating disillusionment throughout the Hemisphere. Economic distress, he warned, would be “followed by popular unrest, skillfully exploited by communist agents there.”70 The shift became more apparent in 1953. At his congressional confirmation hearings, Dulles, soon to be Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, claimed that communists in Latin America were determined “to destroy the influence of

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the so-called Colossus of the North in Central and South America.”71 The president’s brother, Milton Eisenhower, echoed this sentiment, claiming that the conquest of a Latin American nation would not come from direct assault but by “an insidious process of infiltration, conspiracy, spreading of lies, and the undermining of free institution, one by one.” He went on to say that “communists are using tried techniques of subversion and economic influence” to bring about revolution.72 In the Eisenhower administration, regimes like Batista’s were to be fostered. Truman’s moderation and attention to democratizing influences gave way to Eisenhower’s cold-blooded Realpolitik. There would be no room to consider a possible weakening of Batista’s government in order to usher in a new democratic Cuba. Hence, Beaulac’s counsel was heeded neither by the State Department nor the Pentagon. For the attachés, the choice was unambiguous. Both the Pentagon and the State Department called for supporting the senior officers. Certainly, attachés felt that it was their obligation to counsel the military on improving Cuba’s combat readiness. They also strove to build potent bonds of friendship and trust between their two countries. Conversing with younger officers and displaying empathy were part of building friendship and trust. Intervention in the internal political situation, that is, supporting the junior officers against their superiors, was not going to happen. Their job was to continue to support the Batista government in preparation for external defense against communist aggression. Dissatisfaction of the junior officers with their superiors had been slowly building since the onset of Batista’s regime. There were four separate coup attempts by disgruntled officers between August 1952 and April 1953 alone.73 Batista readily put down all these attempts and arrested the conspirators. The president was careful to keep news of the dissident activity quiet. In inquiring about these and other seditious incidents in October 1953, the American embassy was able to glean little in way of confirmation or clarification, arriving at the conclusion that “Batista is evidently maintaining a tight curtain of secrecy regarding personnel possibly on trial for subversive activities.”74 Dissatisfaction became more appreciable in 1954 and 1955, culminating in the insurrection of April 1956, led by Colonel Ramón Barquín.75 Barquín led a group of younger officers known as the Puros. The name, signifying a cigar in Spanish and purer than pure in the local dialect, was given to them contemptuously by “a former Cuban president, whose administration’s graft and corruption rivaled Batista’s.” All were professional men and were considered leaders by the junior officer corps—they were the elite.76 The plot by Barquín and his fellow conspirators had been in the planning stages for over a year.77 They contrived to secure Havana’s main army camp with the support of the tank battalion commanded by a fellow Puro. The U.S. embassy later judged that the plan was “well formed” and capable of

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success.78 Barquín planned to call elections after the coup, selecting the new president from among leading civilians. Batista was to have been sent out of Cuba and officers considered undesirable would have been asked to resign.79 But the Puros were betrayed by one of their number before they could set the plan in motion.80 During the resulting courts martial, the military prosecutor expressed his sorrow and regret. He noted that the conspirators had “caused a great [deal of] damage to the armed institution…they were teachers, they were men of talent, they were mentors…true masters of the army…the spirit of our many brothers.”81 Along with Barquín and Manuel Varela, the participants had been some of the finest officers in the army: Captain José Ramos Avila had just concluded advanced military studies in the United States. Major José J.W.Orihuela was considered the leading artillery expert in the army. Major Enrique Borbonet commanded the Cuban Army’s parachute soldiers. Over two hundred officers were implicated in the plot.82 Barquín was sentenced to four and a half years in prison; the others received various but lesser sentences. The United States understood that the Puro rebellion was a grave setback to the Batista regime. First Secretary of the Embassy Juan de Zengotita and Treadway wrote a memorandum to the U.S. State Department which reflected the conviction of all at the mission that the Barquín insurrection was the most harmful blow the Batista regime had received since coming to power. Treadway noted that Batista would probably be forced to take “immediate action” to stem the tide of revolt within the Army.83 Batista chose to bolster those senior officers loyal to him. As a result of the Barquín insurrection, he conducted a mass purge of officers, both junior and senior, sympathetic to the Puros. A favorite tactic utilized to remove senior officers from places of responsibility was to reassign them as attachés to foreign embassies, Colonel Manuel Ugalde Carrillo’s reassignment to Venezuela being but one example.84 The junior officer corps, defined as those in the rank of lieutenant, captain, and major, suffered the most. Hundreds were mustered out.85 Batista took an especially harsh stand towards those who had received training in the United States, thinking perhaps that they had been exposed to influences that might undermine his regime.86 The morale of the officer corps hit a new low. In a dispatch a week after the coup, Treadway accurately noted, “discharges, resignations, and retirements of officers continue at a rapid pace. Those that remain only await the passage of time until they are able to retire and collect a pension.” Treadway concluded that “Batista’s strength in the Army is especially weakened and worse still, the public knows it.”87 From such dispatches, it is clear that attachés on the scene understood that Batista’s purge of the junior officer corps would have unfortunate consequences. Yet U.S. political, economic, and military assistance to Batista continued. At no time between 1952 and 1957 did the problems in Cuba cause a fundamental reevaluation of the relationship between the two

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governments. The U.S. policy in Latin America and Cuba remained the same: to keep the area quiet and keep communism out.88 The policy failed conspicuously in Cuba. The attachés continued to recommend that the U.S. military cultivate and expand ties with Batista’s armed forces. Shortly after the informal embargo began, a DOD official, after reading a compilation of attaché dispatches, recommended that the United States continue its support to the military despite the repressive nature of Batista’s armed forces and the subsequent removal of moderate elements because of “the unique political position of the military in this society and the importance to maintain influence with these groups.”89 Thus, despite some concern over the nature of U.S. policy toward Batista and the Cuban military, opposition seems to have been confined to attaché dispatches and occasional congressional opposition to Batista’s repressive political tactics. There was no indication of any desire on the part of the executive branch for a change in Cuba policy. It is clear that only the most provocative move by Batista against his military would have provoked a change in military policy towards Cuba. Senior policymakers in both the State and Defense Departments ignored Batista’s elimination of reform-minded officers within the Cuban armed forces. Attachés had no choice but to support Washington’s policy. Castro and his rebels would take full advantage of Cuba’s military weakness. ARMS EMBARGO

Journalists and historians have developed two hypotheses about the relationship between the U.S. State Department’s Cuban policy and the success of Castro’s revolution. One argument, put forward by the ex-Ambassador to Cuba, Earl E.T.Smith, holds that Castro would have never come to power if Roy Richard Rubottom, Jr., the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, and William A.Wieland, the Director of the Office of Middle American Affairs (MID), had not convinced Secretary Dulles and President Eisenhower to impose an arms embargo on Cuba. The second interpretation, advanced by Tad Szulc and Morris Morley, does not fault the State Department for allowing Castro to come to power. Instead it holds that if the Eisenhower administration had taken more of a “hands off” approach toward Batista’s Cuba, the dictator might have been eased out of power and a new government might have formed which would have continued friendly relations with the United States. This part of the chapter will qualify both interpretations by showing that lack of a unified policy toward both Batista and Castro caused indecisiveness and ultimately failure in U.S. policy. When the U.S. State Department pulled its support from Batista starting in 1957—mainly though an arms embargo— the military attaches demurred. Instead of supporting the State Department’s embargo and helping to look for alternatives to Batista, the attachés swung

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their support behind the hawkish U.S. ambassador to Cuba, Earl Smith.90 The attaches fully supported the Cuban military. The attachés’ actions (along with Ambassador Smith’s) ignited a bureaucratic war between the State Department and the Pentagon. The former insisted on keeping the arms embargo in place while the latter demanded its end. In mid-1957, the Eisenhower administration moved from full support for Batista to a policy of neutrality. The administration’s decision was part of an overall change in policy towards Latin America at the time. Milton Eisenhower, the brother of the President and hemispheric troubleshooter, summed up the change in the following way: It became perfectly clear, by 1957, that something new in our policy and our programs affecting Latin America was needed… The masses of Latin America had come to realize that the kind of social structure they had— the kind of life they led—was neither universal nor inevitable… They saw our aid as strengthening the status quo, which they detested and, therefore, equated us with this internal situation—and hence, the more aid, the more dislike.91

The administration’s aid to Batista strengthened the status quo. Milton Eisenhower recalled that at the time everyone looked at Castro’s movement as a “democratic revolt against a dictatorial regime… Everyone was critical of us for not having stopped military aid before March 1958.” The president’s brother was convinced at the time that Castro “intended to have the very kind of democratic social reforms that we were beginning to see were essential in all the countries.”92 Yet, it should be emphasized that when the shift occurred in regards to Batista, it was quite subtle: neither President Eisenhower nor anyone else in his administration ever spoke out publicly against the dictatorship in Cuba. The Department of State quietly changed its military aid policy toward Cuba. They requested that Batista remove from combat all weapons and ammunition that the Government of Cuba had acquired from the United States through the Military Assistance Program (MAP).93 With one exception, the Guantánamo Naval Base did not allow the Cuban Air Force to refuel at its facilities at any time in 1957 and 1958.94 Beginning in early 1957, the State Department postponed indefinitely the shipment of tanks, armored cars, and incendiary bombs to Cuba. The largest weapons shipment that State approved after February 1957 was for 1,050 rifles, which was part of an order placed by Batista in April 1956.95 February 1957 also marks the last important shipment of arms (old Sherman tanks) that the United States sent to Cuba. Moreover, this was the last time that a U.S. ambassador would publicly acknowledge that the United States had sent a shipment of arms to Cuba.96 Pressure from the U.S. public, press, and Congress also influenced the State Department’s decision to cut back on arms sales in mid-1957. The

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State Department had also received reports that in September 1957 the Cuban Air Force had used B–26s, acquired under the MAP, to defeat a revolt of the Cuban Navy at Cienfuegos, Cuba. Later that month, the embassy reported that Batista’s army “used substantial amounts of MAP-supplied and supported equipment in the continuing campaign against rebel forces of Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra Mountains.”97 The use of MAP-supplied equipment to suppress internal disorder violated Article I, Section 2 of the Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement of 7 March 1952. This agreement provided that Cuba would not, without the prior consent of the U.S. government, use MAP materiel for purposes other than to implement defense plans accepted by both governments.98 The State Department needed to be wary of unauthorized use of MAP-supplied military equipment because, in the words of E.Glion Curtis, the officer in charge of InterAmerican Security and Military Assistance: If it should be found that in fact Cuba has violated the [Mutual Defense Assistance] agreement in this way, public reaction in the United States against continued military assistance to the Cuban Government could be expected to increase… Public opinion in the United States is taken into account by Congress, which appropriates funds for the United States Military Assistance Program, and cannot be ignored by the Department in the conduct of foreign relations.99

The result of the arms embargo was that it deprived the Cuban military of U.S. arms and spare parts, caused the Cuban public to perceive that the United States no longer supported Batista, and thereby encouraged rebels such as Castro to continue their campaigns of terrorism and sabotage. While certainly not unbiased, Batista later claimed that the lack of new hardware from his northern neighbor sealed his government’s downfall, because the weapons embargo not only cut off equipment vital to his military but also eroded public support. On the charge that U.S. arms were keeping him in power, Batista declared, “it is a pity that this is not true!,” and argued that if the U.S. had truly supported him, Cuba would not have become a communist state.100 While there were certainly other issues than the U.S. embargo that caused Batista’s downfall, the embargo was a major component. Historian Louis Pérez agrees that the embargo was a major cause of Batista’s downfall, for it showed that the United States no longer supported Batista. Cuban Army soldiers would no longer fight against Castro because “the government…was doomed.”101 The hope was that by withdrawing military support from Batista starting in 1957 (and formally in March 1958), there would be time to ease him out of office and find an alternative with as little violence or disruption as possible. The problem was that a coherent policy never emerged from the White House. This indecision encouraged bitter bureaucratic infighting between those who

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felt the embargo was the best way to ease the dictator out of office and those who supported lifting the embargo and removing the dictator in other ways. This bureaucratic infighting was most pronounced at two levels. One was at the embassy—pitting the pro-embargo Foreign Service officers and CIA against the anti-embargo ambassador and military attachés. The other was at the national level, with the pro-embargo State Department opposing the anti-embargo Pentagon. In Washington, both State and the Pentagon used their representatives at the embassy to back up their contentions regarding the embargo. Attachés played an important role in convincing the Pentagon that the embargo policy undermined stability in Cuba. Ultimately, these divisions complicated the search for the best policy to adopt towards an island on the verge of revolution.102 The problem was that non-intervention was not a unifying concept or one that provided a clear path. In defending Batista’s position, Ambassador Smith argued that the enormous influence the United States had on its island neighbor made non-intervention difficult. Any activity by the embassy or by politicians in Washington could impact events in Cuba. Even withholding shipments of armored vehicles and aircraft with the idea of not interfering was in effect a kind of intervention, because it would cost Batista militarily and politically. The U.S. ambassador believed on the contrary that Castro’s revolution was not a movement with broad-based legitimacy but the work of a small cadre of radicals, financed, and aided by international communism. Cuba had one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Smith argued that the U.S. refusal to continue arms shipments to Cuba undermined the government when it most needed assistance, a kind of “intervention by innuendo.” Smith went so far as to turn the idea of non-intervention on its head: the refusal to send arms for use against Castro’s rebels was in fact meddling in the island’s internal affairs. Inaction was counterproductive.103 To the State Department, the FSOs, and the CIA, the Castro movement was not a communist movement, and was in fact hostile to the communist party. Castro’s lieutenants, Raúl Castro and Ché Guevara, were avowed Marxist-Leninists but not official members of the International. The FSOs interpreted the presence of Marxists with Castro as a natural outgrowth of leftist opposition to a repressive government. Castro’s 26th of July movement had a small Marxist following. But Milton Eisenhower believed its program was moderate, calling for a return to the 1940 constitution and land reform. The chief of CIA operations for Central America as well as CIA agents on the ground in Cuba agreed with the FSOs that there was little danger of the communists taking over in Cuba.104 The attachés on the ground in Cuba disagreed with the CIA and the FSOs and threw their support behind the ambassador. The military attachés felt, like U.S. officers who trained the Cuban Army, that cutting off military aid would undermine the island’s military and poison the military relations between the two neighbors. U.S. Army attaché Joseph Treadway took the

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lead for the attachés in attempting to reverse the embargo. In several memorandums to his superiors in Washington (which met with the full approval of the ambassador), Treadway laid out the argument against the embargo. The attachés saw the suspension of sales of military equipment and the suspension of delivery of equipment previously purchased by the government of Cuba as inconsistent with existing national security policy for the area. The embargo encouraged the purchase of military equipment from sources other than the United States, restricted Batista’s ability to provide internal security, and could cause other Latin American nations to turn to other sources to procure military equipment. What seemed to rankle Treadway even more was the deterioration in relations caused by the embargo. It made the U.S. military’s job in Cuba uncomfortable. In a memorandum to the Secretary of State, Smith spoke for the attachés. He noted that all three services had encountered hostility from their Cuban counterparts. The Army representatives felt that the failure to fulfill formal contracts placed them “in a most embarrassing, in fact, almost untenable position.” The result was a “deterioration in relationships between the Cuban Army and U.S.…[and a resulting] lack of good faith in making and keeping of inter-governmental contracts.” Smith ended the dispatch by arguing that the U.S. personnel had spent years building up close working relations with the Cuban military. The embargo was undermining all these years of work; in effect, the fruits of their labor were “going down the drain.”105 Army attaché Colonel Samuel Kail seemed the most upset by the deterioration in the relationship between military men. Former Cuban Army Major Claudio Medel recalled Kail’s frustration with the State Department’s policy in a letter to the author: By mid-1958, the efforts of the Eisenhower Administration to overthrow Batista’s government were plainly visible, and sometimes the colonel had to face bitter criticism. The brunt of our grievances fell on poor Kail’s head, though he always managed to come through with grace.

Medel recalled a meeting between Kail and General Tabernilla: He requested an appointment from General Tabernilla. It concerned an American enterprise that was having trouble [with guerrillas] in the eastern part of Cuba. Kail requested that Cuban troops be sent to protect it. Naturally, the general grabbed the opportunity to complain bitterly about Eisenhower’s policy toward Cuba. Colonel Kail faced the storm as stolidly as a grenadier guard, and nodded, smiled, and agreed all the time. At the end, after the General vented his displeasure, Kail asked permission to speak. I well remember his words, for I was the interpreter. This is more or less what he said: “I wish the General to know how embarrassed I feel that at this moment, and I much regret that, in your moment of need, I was unable to come to your assistance. If you turn down my request,

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General, I shall understand.” And believe it or not, the general, suddenly mollified, stated “you are a good man, Colonel, and have an awful task to perform. I’ll see what I can do for you.” And the troops were sent.106

Kail also let his superiors in the Pentagon know his frustration. In a dispatch to the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the attaché noted that he was attempting, in every legal way possible, to prevent “further deterioration of the relationship between the Cuban Army and the U.S. Army attaché. This heretofore friendly relationship has been on the downgrade apparently since the banning of arms shipments to Cuba.”107 At the level of the embassy, there was a poisoning of relations among the U.S. members of the country team. The professional diplomatic officers frequently clashed with Ambassador Smith, who quickly grew distant from his staff. At one point, Smith ordered that no messages, no matter how routine, leave the embassy without going through him first. Wayne Smith, a junior Foreign Service officer in Havana in 1958, described the atmosphere in embassy meetings as poisonous.108 In an attempt to get some unfiltered information through the Smith bottleneck, the State Department went so far as to develop a back channel reporting link through the U.S. consulate in Santiago.109 Military attachés proved to be the only personnel in the embassy who agreed with and willingly backed the beleaguered Smith. The attachés often clashed with the Foreign Service officers and CIA agents in the embassy. In a conversation with the author, Naval attaché Phillip Klepek recalled his distrust and dislike of the CIA especially: The CIA [operatives] were assholes then and are assholes now. The decision [regarding the embargo] had been reached by the State Department. A friend of mine in the Department told me not to worry about Castro. When I got to Cuba, I asked the CIA what the hell they were doing. They told me that Batista had to go and the embargo was the way to do it. I told them they were screwed up and not backing the right guy.110

Klepak noted that his feelings reflected the consensus of Treadway, Kail, and the air attachés. Those who backed the ambassador and supported lifting the embargo, he recalled, were “given the cold shoulder by the foreign service officers—[John] Topping [the embassy’s chief political officer] and [William] Bowdler [political officer].”111 The attachés did not rely just on the ambassador to get their opinions on the embargo to Washington. Treadway, Klepak, and Kail sent numerous dispatches to their superiors urging the embargo be overturned. Their dispatches had a clear effect in convincing an already pro-Batista Pentagon to oppose the embargo and to challenge the State Department on this foreign policy issue.

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The opening salvo occurred on 2 May 1958, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff met with the State Department. The JCS pressed to restore arms shipments and to relax MAP restrictions. Admiral Arleigh Burke, the Chief of Naval Operations, echoed the attachés’ concerns, stating that there was a serious deterioration in relations between the two armies due for the most part to the embargo. He claimed that State was interpreting the 1952 agreement “too rigidly” and “trying to tell a sovereign nation what to do.” He pressed for military sales to resume.112 When the situation of the Cuban Army continued to deteriorate, Burke pressed his case with more urgency. In a 27 June 1958 meeting with State, Burke brought out the specter of Soviet machinations, echoing Smith and the attachés’ charge that Castro was “allied with communism.” Again, he pressed for resumption of arms shipments to prevent the situation from deteriorating further. But no resolution came from the meeting.113 Eisenhower did not seem concerned about the deteriorating events in Cuba. The president’s appointment of Earl Smith was one example. Like most of his predecessors in Cuba, Smith was a political appointee whose main career had been as a businessman, in this case a Florida banker whose appointment to Havana was in return for valuable fundraising for the Republican Party. The ambassador spoke no Spanish and rarely ventured outside the embassy. The president’s appointment of Smith in late 1957 was curious because of the deteriorating situation in Cuba. As the diplomatic historian Thomas Paterson has noted, “no extraordinary steps were taken to select as ambassador a diplomat of known mediating skills, an experienced troubleshooter, or a Latin American specialist who spoke Spanish.” Eisenhower was not alarmed about Cuba. None of his closest advisors, who included his brother Milton, warned him about Cuba. All would seemingly continue as before.114 Several other examples also show Eisenhower’s indifference about the situation. The embargo was not brought up in press conferences nor did the media ask the president about it.115 In August 1958, after Castro had successfully defeated Batista’s forces in the Verano offensive, Eisenhower’s NSC meeting for that month did not mention the situation in Cuba at all. Nor was there a mention of the conflict between State and Defense on the arms embargo. Topics discussed included the Middle East, the long-range ballistic missile program, and policy towards Korea.116 The upshot was that the conflict between State and Defense was never resolved either in Washington or at the embassy. Up through the end of 1958 as Castro’s rebels gained the upper hand and support for Batista inside Cuba waned, each side continued to press their own solution. The arms embargo, though, stayed in place. In fact, attachés and the JCS were forwarding memoranda demanding a lifting of the embargo up until Batista abdicated. On 30 December 1958, the Chairman of the JCS, General Nathan Twining, called for terminating the embargo in order to “combat rebel elements whose

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organization has undoubtedly been penetrated by communists.”117 Batista fled the country the next day. Informed during an NSC meeting on 23 December that the Cuban dictator might flee the country, the president expressed surprise. The day after the meeting, in a conversation with his national security advisor, Gordon Gray, the president said that the situation in Cuba “had been allowed to slip somewhat,” in that he had not been kept informed on the matter to the degree he had been used to with other matters.118 The president would soon have Cuba on the top of his agenda. *** Historians who have asked why the Cuban Army lost, blame it on incompetent senior Cuban Army officers, Batista’s purge of junior officers, the Cuban Army’s inability to fight a guerrilla war, and the arms embargo that the United States placed on Batista starting in 1957. On all these counts, with the exception of failing to forecast an insurgency, the attaches did a laudable job in reporting the trends in the Cuban Army. The embassy and their superiors in Washington were kept aware of these issues. Certainly among the most unfortunate casualties of Castro’s ultimate victory were the junior officer corps. Groomed to be proficient military servants by their own schools and those of the United States, they were the embodiment of what one author characterized as “objective, career service officers, loyally serving the government in power and professionally competent.”119 They struggled against the graft and corruption of the Batista regime, not out of disloyalty to the government but in opposition to actions that were having a deleterious effect on the professionalism and combat readiness of the Cuban military. A further irony was the lack of United States support of these officers, many of whom the U.S. had specifically trained to embody the professional military ethic. Instead of backing the junior officers, the United States publicly celebrated its alliance with the military politicalgangsters Batista had placed at the highest levels of command. Despite the advantages that might have accompanied an eventual Cuban officer corps free from corruption and divorced from politics, the Eisenhower administration never wanted to support alternatives to Batista and the generals. Cuba and other Latin American countries were to be strengthened through hemispheric alliances designed to stop Soviet influence in an area of strategic and economic importance to the United States. Central to these enhanced military ties was an emphasis on improving relations with those governments who professed support for the MADP. The U.S. embraced Batista’s corrupt military-políticos, not as a value judgment in favor of graft over virtue, but after a careful assessment of U.S. strategic interests. The Eisenhower administration felt that dictatorial regimes would be more predictably and efficiently anticommunist and, sadly, more pro-U.S. than other types of governance, including democratic systems with

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corruption-free militaries. There was no real possibility that Eisenhower would support Cuban officers who desired to change the military-strategic environment of Cuba. Washington was happy with the way things stood. Attachés on the scene, having received clear guidance on whom to support, simply carried out the intent of their commander-in-chief. Attachés’ actions during the arms embargo were in marked contrast to their actions regarding Cuba’s junior officers. In the case of the embargo, the president and secretary of state did not reaffirm their support for the embargo when attachés complained to their Pentagon superiors that the policy was having a corrosive effect on Cuban military readiness. If Eisenhower had been decisive on this matter, no doubt the attaches would have supported the policy in full. However, because the president remained mute, the attaches pressed for lifting the sanctions. Their Pentagon superiors, as well as the U.S. ambassador, Earl Smith, met this with approval. Having their actions affirmed by both their Washington bosses and Smith, the attachés were further emboldened to signal to their Cuban counterparts that they did not agree with their government’s policy. In all, the attachés had a mixed record in reporting the major trends that affected the Cuban military during the 1950s. They reported accurately on the armed forces combat readiness, but measured this readiness based on their ability to assist with hemispheric defense rather than facing a possible guerrilla insurgency. Attachés, on the other hand, should be held culpable for underestimating the threat that Castro posed to the regime in 1957 and 1958. They should have informed their superiors in stronger terms that the Cuban Army was on the verge of collapse.120 They did not, and this failure probably added to the complacency top policymakers had regarding the situation in Cuba in 1957 and 1958. Finally, the actions of the attachés in the embargo imbroglio bring up questions of whether the military officer should be a policy advocate or not. In the case of Cuba, attaché support of the ambassador’s policy contributed to the divisiveness of the embassy and exacerbated conflicts between the State Department and Pentagon. The avocation of policy in this case did not lead to the desired outcome—that of keeping communism out of Cuba. The United States is still dealing with the fallout today.

CHAPTER FIVE

U.S. Attachés and the Bolivian MNR, 1958–1964

On 4 November 1964, a military junta led by General René Barrientos overthrew Victor Paz as the president of Bolivia. Paz’s fall from power ended twelve years of government by the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR)—one of the major Latin American revolutions of the twentieth century. Paz had won re-election eight months earlier with little opposition. Starting his third four-year term, it seemed he would continue his party’s rule. Instead, the re-election signaled the beginning of the end for the revolutionary regime. The plot was planned and executed primarily by the armed forces, which had had the support of Paz and had been rebuilt with the assistance of the United States. The armed opposition, the civilian militia, once feared by Army leaders, was now poorly trained and armed and could offer little resistance. The coup was a success and the ex-president was escorted to the airport to begin his exile. HISTORIOGRAPHY AND ATTACHÉ MEASUREMENT CRITERIA

What caused the fall of the reformist MNR and Paz? Most Bolivian specialists attribute its demise primarily to fissures within the MNR political structure. Robert Alexander notes that before Paz’s presidential election campaign the major figures within the MNR had broken with Paz or had been forced to leave the country. Juan Lechín, the leader of the MNR left, formed his own party, the Partido Revolucionario de la Izquierda Nacionalista—PRIN. Hernán Siles, the president from 1956–1960, was forced into exile for his open opposition to Paz.1 Christopher Mitchell concurs with Alexander, but adds that the coup could be traced to the MNR economic austerity measures of 1956, which alienated the MNR’s main basis of support, the urban middle classes, and caused them to turn to the military as their primary spokesman.2 James Dunkerley points out that rural campesinos, traditionally conservative 101

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in nature, received what they wanted from the MNR in 1952—land reform— and were not a player in the internal political situation of Bolivia after that year.3 The other major group with influence, the tin miners led by Lechín, had been alienated by Paz’s attempts to shut mines and eliminate jobs from 1956 to 1964. Thus, by the time of the November 1964 coup, Paz had the passive support of the campesinos but had isolated himself from the middle class and the powerful tin miners. Thus he was extremely vulnerable to a coup. Where all authors find common ground is in the importance of the military in the overthrow of the MNR. There were several important trends in the Bolivian armed forces that historians believe were instrumental in Paz’s overthrow. William Brill, a political scientist present in Bolivia during the coup, has written that the rebuilding of the military is critical to understanding the 1964 coup. Paz mistakenly believed that currying the military’s favor would “carry fewer liabilities” than other alternatives. By rebuilding the military, Paz created an alternate source of political power that ultimately questioned his authority and overthrew him.4 Authors have a mixed opinion generally on the importance of the U.S. role in the coup. Cole Blasier points out that the coup was primarily a “domestic matter,” but adds that the U.S. played an important role in the armed forces’ rise to power. He notes that “critics…have written so much against U.S. involvement [in the rebuilding of the military] and they have been so widely believed” that the U.S. is assumed to have a greater role than it actually did.5 Several scholars have argued that the United States was partially culpable because it encouraged Paz to rebuild the military. With Cold War conflicts intruding into Latin America in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Washington soon came to regard the MNR government as vulnerable to internal subversion. Despite reservations from various quarters, the Department of State maintained a policy of rebuilding the Bolivian military as a means of forestalling any escalation of social and political tensions or the “communization” of the Bolivian Revolution. The 1964 coup can be seen as a culmination of a military rebuilding process that began under U.S. supervision in 1960–61.6 Other authors see a more sinister U.S. role. Kenneth Lehman and James Dunkerley have concluded that the coup received “the unmistakable support of the Pentagon.” In particular, they have zeroed in on the role of U.S. Air attaché Colonel Edward Fox, his close relationship with General Barrientos, and the encouragement he supposedly gave the general to overthrow Paz. Lehman and Dunkerley’s claims (they never interviewed Fox) probably overstate the role of the United States;7 but undoubtedly Fox’s role in the events leading up to the coup should be examined. This chapter will examine the awareness that attachés had of several trends that historians agree are essential for understanding the military antecedents which led to the Bolivian coup. These trends include: the ways attachés

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measured the combat capabilities of the various military forces in Bolivia; the influence attachés had on the U.S. decision to back the military as a stabilizing influence; the ways attachés chronicled the rebuilding of the military; and the ways they understood and reported on the increasing role of the military in Bolivian politics. Finally, this chapter will explore the relationship between Colonel Fox and General Barrientos and the role the attaché played in the events culminating in the November 1964 coup. This chapter argues that the Army attaché, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Wimert, did an excellent job reporting on the military situation in the country, was influential in the formation of a U.S. policy to back the military, and stressed as forcefully as he could to Washington and the U.S. embassy the threat to Bolivian democracy posed by rearming the military. Fox, described by various authors as the “Fox of the Andes,” was an extraordinary air attaché. He possessed all the desirable qualities a representative of the U.S. government should have—fluency, knowledge of local conditions, and an appreciation for the culture. Yet Fox’s close friendship with Barrientos made it impossible for him to assess objectively the political situation in Bolivia. This friendship made him and the U.S. government vulnerable to accusations of collusion with the military in the overthrow of the legitimately elected government of President Victor Paz. While Fox’s true role in the November 1964 coup may never be known, his actions reinforced a cynical view of U.S. involvement in that region during the Cold War. *** In April 1952, the middle-class MNR, led by Paz, and with the support of armed Indian miners and peasants, overthrew the regime of the landed class and tin barons. A central problem faced by the new government was the disposition of the regular military establishment.8 Since the Chaco War with Paraguay in the 1930s, the military had been an integral part of the political scene. Various governments both leftist and centrist were led by military men or ruled with the approval of the military. When the MNR won its first election in 1951, the military, along with the civilian leaders already in power, decided that the MNR should not be permitted to come to power. The ruling military junta voided the elections and vaguely promised new ones at a future date. After a bloody countercoup, the MNR removed the illegal junta and came to power. Once in power, it was clear to Paz, Siles, Lechín, and other leaders that the party must protect itself from military-led counterrevolution. In the months following the coup, they reduced the military, making it impotent.9 The government closed the Colegio Militar, the principal military educational institution and purged officers considered politically unreliable. Between April 1952 and January 1953, about twenty percent of the officers were dismissed, two hundred and fifty out of a total of twelve hundred.10 The MNR hierarchy seriously considered the complete elimination of the army, a proposal

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advocated by the more radical members of the party. With difficulty, the president convinced party leaders that the Army could be tamed and would serve the country. Ultimately, Paz chose to leave the military structure essentially intact but deprived it of vital resources and closely controlled its leadership.11 Armed forces expenditures dropped from twenty-three percent of the national budget in 1952 to seven percent in 1957.12 The country’s economic difficulties proved far more daunting for the MNR leaders than the size and influence of the armed forces. Paz, Vice President Lechín, and other MNR leaders faced a severe economic crisis. Bolivia’s chief export, tin, had precipitously declined in price because of a drop in demand. MNR leaders’ failure to develop a master plan for the reorganization of the economy prevented them from dealing effectively with the emergency. Despite the crisis, the MNR nationalized the tin mines in October 1952, exacerbating the country’s problems. The nationalization decree produced an atmosphere of uncertainty in the international market that jeopardized Bolivia’s ability to sell tin overseas. By early 1953, the MNR faced a complete breakdown in the economy and starvation on a massive scale.13 At that juncture, the United States decided to assist Bolivia. For the first half-decade of MNR rule, Washington limited its aid to agricultural assistance and financial support, as well as crucially buttressing Bolivia’s economic position by guaranteeing to buy its tin at world market prices until 1958. Between 1953 and 1958, the United States contributed over one hundred and fifty million dollars in economic loans and grants to the Bolivian government, a sum greater than that given to any other democratically elected government in Latin America.14 Within a few years of the decision to aid the MNR, the United States came to the conclusion that the key to economic growth in Bolivia was the maintenance of the rule of law, in which property and other rights necessary to advance economic growth would be protected. Embassy officials, who reported to Washington daily on the internal situation in Bolivia, noted the anarchy throughout the countryside and sought to define and understand the problem in order to reach a solution. The embassy thought that the disorder in Bolivia had multiple causes— mostly internal and of the country’s own making. The disorder in Bolivia, according to a confidential State Department memo written in 1957, stemmed from “arbitrary government that shades into lawless politicking, into barbarous acts by local strongmen, into thuggery by individuals with political protection, into class and organization strife, and into the more usual forms of corruption.” Furthermore, “the whole complex of lawlessness, combined with the government’s apparent unwillingness or inability to control it, added up to a considerable degree of anarchy in the country.”15 Policymakers in Washington and officials at the U.S. embassy looked to the military attachés to explain the anarchy that was gripping Bolivia and preventing economic growth. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Wimert was the Army

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attaché during the critical period, 1959–1963, when the United States decided to back the military. Commissioned in 1943, Wimert served during the 1950s in a variety of Latin American assignments. A former member of the U.S. Olympic Equestrian Team, he was very popular with Latin American officers. He served as riding instructor in Venezuela from 1953 to 1956 and was the Latin American desk officer for the Army from 1958 to 1959. It was in July 1959, after attending the Strategic Intelligence School, that he reported to Bolivia.16 Wimert and his family looked forward to an assignment back to Latin America. His experience in the region plus his riding skills gave him confidence that he would easily make contacts in the Bolivian military: Riding was important. A key for me was my love of horses and my ability to ride. The military attaché who replaced me, Colonel [William] Lind, was asked by the Bolivian commanding general if he could ride. Lind answered he could fish, in which the general replied that that skill would be of little use in Bolivia. To say the least Lind was not well received by their military.17

He combined his riding skill with a fanatical work ethic in which he contrasted with other attachés: Too many attachés believed their work was a nine to five job. I made it a point to go to Bolivian functions and not get caught up in the cocktail circuit. As an attaché, you were like a roving reporter. You had to get out and see things. You had to hit the streets and not worry about being in the office.18

Many sources attest to Wimert’s skill and hard work. U.S. Ambassador Benjamin Stephansky, who was not enamored with military men, was lavish in his praise of Wimert, writing to the attaché’s boss, General Alva Fitch, that Wimert was “resourceful and physically courageous,” participating in numerous training exercises of the Bolivian Army under simulated combat conditions at altitudes over twelve thousand feet. Stephansky then referred to his horsemanship: His exceptional skill in horsemanship has given him a special entrée into military circles. He has been for some time honorary professor of equitation at the Bolivian Military Academy where, entirely on his own time, he gives classes to the cadets. He has close and friendly relations with the commandant, faculty, and the cadets of the Academy.19

Wimert’s relations with political officers at the embassy were excellent. Stephansky stated uncategorically that he placed “heavy reliance on attaché information and analysis” to determine courses of action not just for the

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military but also in the formulation of U.S. policy in general.20 Embassy officers relied on him for almost all information on the Bolivian military. As Wimert explained, most Bolivian officers were unwilling to talk with civilians. This fact made Wimert the logical conduit for information emanating from military circles. Wimert was also willing to venture outside the embassy to get information others were afraid to obtain. Bolivia in the early 1960s, he recalled, resembled the Wild West of the late 1800s in the United States. “To be perfectly frank most of the civilians in the embassy were afraid to leave the embassy compound. I always packed a pistol in case I was assaulted or robbed and carried a case of Jack Daniels in my jeep to bribe the Indian caciques for safe passage through certain areas.” The embassy political officers loved him because, in Wimert’s words, “I got the intelligence for them and didn’t withhold any information from them.”21 If Wimert had a weakness, it was Spanish. He did have six months of language instruction before his assignment, but was still far from fluent. A U.S. official, who recommended Wimert for a posting in Chile in 1965, described Wimert’s Spanish as “not good…adequate, intelligible, but badly pronounced.” The official did mention, however, that Wimert could communicate with Bolivian Army officers at all levels, “few of whom spoke English.”22 Wimert made up for his weakness in Spanish with hard work and the respect he earned from the Bolivian officers. He was thus better prepared than most attachés to report on the military and the internal security problems in Bolivia. This chapter will look first at how Wimert reported on the internal military situation in the countryside. Since the ascendancy of the MNR in 1952, the military had been rendered impotent and the power vacuum filled by paramilitary forces. Two in particular, the carabineros (police) and the civilian militia, held sway, but the civilian militia was much stronger. There were two types of militia, those based on the MNR’s grupos de honor under the command of MNR apparatchiks and those outside the control of the central government who owed their first loyalty to local labor unions, regional caciques, and local campesino groups. Since the 1952 revolution, when the armed forces were made impotent, the MNR saw the militia as its primary defense force. The militias were numerous. During the first May Day parade in 1953, over forty thousand militia members marched by the presidential reviewing stands. Seen as leftist or left-leaning and powerful, U.S. observers feared that they might come under communist influence and overwhelm the depleted armed forces. The U.S. increasingly began to see the militia as the cause of internal instability in Bolivia—a trend which continued into the 1960s.23 Wimert continued to report to the U.S. embassy and his superiors in the Pentagon on the dangers posed by the militia. He chronicled a 9 April 1960 MNR review of the militia which he described as a “mammoth parade which lasted over four hours” and included truckloads of Indians and miners from

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the countryside who “descended on the city early…intermittent rifle and gunfire could be heard for three days after the parade had ended.”24 Equally alarming to Wimert were the actions of Toribio Salas, a former member of the Bolivian Congress who lost his seat when charged with murder. The disgruntled former congressman organized his own militia, numbering three thousand, and proceeded to make himself the jefe at the mining town of Achacachi. This incident, plus the review of the militia, prompted Wimert to report to the embassy and his superiors that the militias endangered stability in Bolivia. In a dispatch to the Army filed through the embassy, Wimert stated flatly that the actions of Salas showed that given the loose conglomeration of armed peasants, any cacique of note could become a power in Bolivia and disrupt the government. The danger was that “militias located so near to La Paz could pose a threat not only to the armed forces but to the president himself.”25 Wimert equated stability with the armed forces and President Paz. In a intelligence report submitted to the Army and forwarded to the NSC, Wimert put the problem with the militia in the strongest terms: The civilian militia, with arms and weapons, are large in number, spread throughout the country, are well oriented on the ground where they would have to fight, and are able to appear on the scene without formal orders such as the Army would have to have to receive a order to act, and their logistical problems are few. With what the Bolivian Army has at hand today, it would be like “killing ants at a picnic” to eliminate the civilian militia.26

In contrast to the militias, Wimert viewed the army as a force for stability in the country. Much smaller than the militias, the Bolivian Army varied in strength from eleven thousand to as few as four thousand when down to cadre strength between annual intakes of conscripts. Most intelligence estimates described the army as suffering from “poor leadership and discipline, low quality recruits, inadequate training, and antiquated equipment.” A study completed by the DOD in March 1961 concluded that Bolivia would have difficulty defending the country from external attack, even from neighboring states. Even internally, the army would have trouble maintaining order because the civilian militia could be played off against the army to insure the dominance of the civilian government.27 Despite these sober projections, Wimert saw the Bolivian Army more positively. He was able, through his reporting, to convince the U.S. embassy and the DOD to see the army as a force to ensure internal stability. In a 28 June 1961 dispatch to the Army, Wimert praised the Bolivian Presidential Escort Regiment (Regimiento Escolta Waldo Ballivian). He noted that upon arrival in Bolivia he was briefed by the U.S. Army mission that the Bolivian Army soldier was considered, for the most part, “on the dumb side and totally inefficient and had a poor record of maintenance of their equipment.” He debunked this view.28 Bolivian soldiers were in fact “energetic and extremely

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anxious to learn and had the capacity to learn.” The weapons they had were “in excellent condition.” Officers trained by the United States in the Canal Zone were being used “to the fullest extent—the officers grab and cherish every small bit of information and piece of equipment they can get their hands on.” Wimert suggested that with U.S. aid and training, the Bolivian military could develop a “tough, efficient regiment that could be utilized in the mountainous areas to fight either for the United States or the United Nations.” For Bolivia to advance economically and socially “it will need to reinforce and better its armed forces, and this can only be done with U.S. aid.”29 When Wimert observed the same regiment a month later, he repeated these conclusions.30 Besides his contacts with army units, Wimert’s discussions with Bolivian armed forces leaders convinced him that the military was anticommunist and serious about ensuring internal stability. General Alfredo Ovando, Chief of the Army, paid a visit to Wimert and Ambassador Earl Strom at the embassy in March 1960. Ovando stated emphatically that stability depended on disarming the militia and building up the military. Ovando stressed the extent of anarchy in Bolivia. The militias could only be disarmed by a combination of leadership and force. The Bolivian president might well provide the leadership but the Army could not neutralize the militia. This was why the general believed it was essential for Bolivia to obtain military assistance from the United States. He favored a pact or some procedure to provide the Army with special equipment needed to increase its internal security capabilities.31 In response to a question from Wimert, the general stated that more than ninety percent of the personnel in the armed forces were anticommunist. Communist infiltration of the Army was negligible. By stationing the military in unstable militia havens like Cochabamba, he noted, the Army could effectively root out communist influence there and in other areas.32 Ovando’s comments reinforced Wimert’s belief that the building-up of the Bolivian military was one solution for the country. Its armed forces were disciplined, able, anticommunist, and had leaders who desired to end the anarchy that gripped the country. Wimert’s memoranda on the Bolivian armed forces and his relations with pro-American Bolivian generals gave Ambassador Strom’s successor, Benjamin Stephansky, ammunition to push for increased military aid. In a memorandum to Secretary of State Rusk in late August 1961, the new ambassador put in the strongest terms possible the importance of arming the military. Stephansky charged, “the Paz government is politically weak and growing weaker and would not take decisive action needed to alter the internal situation.” The military in its present state, he warned, would not be able to end the anarchy in the country. Only with military aid would the armed forces be able to increase its prestige. Mentioning Wimert, he told Rusk, “as you know this is the synthesis view expressed by the Army attaché.”33 Stephansky, in consultation with the State Department and Pentagon would reach a consensus

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in late 1961 that the most important immediate objective was to bring about a reduction in the size and influence of the militia while persuading the government to increase its reliance on the armed forces.34 Events in Latin America in 1960 and 1961 heightened the region’s vulnerability to radical social revolution and created greater impetus to aid the Bolivian military. Central to Washington’s perceptions was Fidel Castro’s overthrow of the pro-American dictator of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista, which turned the Cuban Revolution into a bitterly anti-American movement. Many foreign policy analysts blamed hemispheric turmoil on the machinations of the “international communist conspiracy” directed by the Soviet Union.35 Kennedy’s reaction to this and other crises was both economic and military. In 1961, he announced the Alliance for Progress, which allocated ten billion dollars over ten years to help alleviate socioeconomic inequities in Latin America.36 In the military sphere, the United States would now be fully committed to providing for the internal security of Latin American states. The military component of the Alliance would also include civic action (CA), which provided resources to build roads, schools, and other facilities—termed “nation-building” by Alliance planners. While the chief purpose behind CA was to furnish resources for civilian projects, the program also strengthened Latin American militaries, especially in Bolivia. Naturally, Bolivian Army leaders embraced CA because it meant an increase in equipment and money.37 The Bolivian military became the major beneficiary and one of the centerpiece countries in the Alliance program. There can be no doubt that the avid support of Stephansky and Wimert had much to do with this. With the encouragement of the U.S. country team, U.S. military planners in Bolivia moved quickly to improve the training, mobility, and firepower of the Bolivian military.38 Shipments of machinery and vehicles arrived in large quantities from 1961 on. In January 1962, the Kennedy administration approved over 1.4 million dollars in grant aid to improve the capacity of the armed forces to maintain internal security. This sum increased to 4.1 million dollars in 1963. By the end of 1962, the United States had effectively outfitted one motorized battalion, two engineer battalions, two infantry battalions, and two air force squadrons, practically doubling the equipment of the armed forces. In addition to equipment, Bolivians began to attend U.S. schools in the Canal Zone and the continental United States, increasing the professional competence of the officer and noncommissioned officer corps. The United States increased Bolivia’s military capability by furnishing in-country instruction using both permanent and mobile training teams (MTT). In all, seven MTTs conducted operations in late 1961 and early 1962 alone, schooling over seven hundred soldiers.39 The Bolivian military also fully embraced civic action programs, building numerous roads, schoolhouses, and public works projects with the assistance of U.S. military aid and advisors. Alliance planners concluded that Bolivian military support for CA was the strongest in Latin America.40 At the third

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annual Inter-American Air Force Chiefs Conference held in May 1963 in Panama, Teodoro Moscoso, the United States coordinator for the Alliance for Progress, assessed the first two years of the program. At least a quarter of his speech praised the Bolivian CA program. “Bolivian officials and military officers showed me the priorities and necessities in the country immediately upon arrival,” Moscoso commented, “now here you see that their intent is good and to be lauded.” The coordinator also praised the military, “I believe that there is now greater awareness, greater acknowledgment, of the very important constructive role that is being played by the military in the development of Bolivia as well as the very great importance they are playing in the control of subversive elements.” General Barrientos, who would later become the president of the military junta in 1964, responded to Moscoso’s comments. He stated that the military would continue to address his country’s social and economic situation by “working in the field of labor …under the Alliance For Progress and its civic action program to help secure internal stability and combat communism.”41 This aid augmented the strength of the Bolivian military. Wimert kept the U.S. embassy and his superiors in the Pentagon abreast of these developments in a number of dispatches. Military enlistment rates increased dramatically, reflecting the increasing prestige of the military and the improving morale of the force. Wimert noted that in 1957 his predecessor had thought that the army would have difficulty meeting its goal of ten thousand five hundred men. In a 1962 memo, Wimert described the Army’s yearly conscription drive which had to turn away thousands of youths who desired to enlist. Youths fought with each other in order to enlist and rioted later in the day when told there were no more slots available.42 In June 1962, Wimert described an exercise where the Bolivian military conducted advanced tactical training of a complexity not seen since 1952. In June, the five hundred strong cadet force of the Colegio Militar, with the assistance of U.S. Army Special Forces, conducted intricate military exercises in guerrilla and counter-guerrilla warfare tactics. The use of live ammunition to simulate realism greatly impressed the U.S. Special Forces soldiers, many of whom had been training with the Bolivians over the past year and a half and respected how quickly they had grasped the essentials of unconventional warfare.43 A month later, the Bolivian Army held their first large-scale military maneuvers in over ten years. The maneuvers simulated an attack on “seditious” campesino militia units. President Paz, who personally attended the games, judged the open-order drill a success.44 Buoyed by the Bolivian military’s increasing strength and ability, Wimert and the U.S. embassy looked closely at how this would translate into increased stability in the countryside. In other words, would the military be able to defeat the militia? The answer would come as Wimert observed the Army operate in the Cliza Valley, near Cochabamba, in November 1962. The government moved army units into the area to restore order and institute a

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cordon sanitaire. Compared with the late 1950s, when the army was routed, they now quickly reestablished control. Twenty persons were arrested and one of the leaders of the partisans deported. The ease with which the armed forces brought stability in this militia stronghold demonstrated their new ability. Delighted with the turn of events, Wimert sent word immediately to the Department of Defense.45 Confirmation of the military’s strength came from the Bolivian government a month later when the Bolivian Minister of Defense stated confidently that “the situation had passed and that there was increasing control of the militia by the Ministry of Defense and by Army officers.” Even in mining towns like Toro-Toro, where the militia was closely tied to the miners, the armed forces now “essentially controlled the area, which a few years earlier was entirely controlled by the militia.”46 Thus, it was clear that by 1963 the military had stabilized the internal security situation in Bolivia; the United States had accomplished its intended mission in less than two years. Washington regarded the military as the main barrier to anarchy and communism and a possible vehicle for economic development. Nevertheless, there was a danger in rearming the military—the possibility of a coup and an installation of the military junta. The record of military intervention in Bolivian politics was well documented. The chance of a military takeover certainly existed. The question here is whether Wimert understood the political implications of rearming the military. Indeed, well before Wimert’s arrival, Washington considered the possibility that the military might assume power. A National Intelligence Estimate written in March 1954 noted that the MNR firmly controlled internal security. However, the authors predicted that the military, at some future time, would “almost certainly seize power.”47 In a March 1961 memo to JFK, presidential aide Arthur Schlesinger confided that a military assistance agreement with Bolivia was a good thing but felt that as far as strengthening democracy went, “such agreements seem to me to be bad for Latin America.”48 In the early sixties, the U.S. military began to acknowledge tacitly that a military junta was a more likely scenario. In a secret assessment published in September 1960, Pentagon authors noted that the Army along with the carabineros should be capable of maintaining internal security. This positive assessment came with a caveat: “nevertheless, the government (MNR) has never proved able over a long period of time to keep the loyalty of all significant portions of the armed forces.”49 Wimert was attuned to the political ramifications of rearmament and reported them to the embassy. In June 1960, for instance, Wimert observed a ceremony where new officers swore an oath of loyalty to the MNR government. The pledge seemed to have been taken reluctantly according to the attaches. The apparently loyal armed forces still disdained the MNR, an attitude apparently taught to incoming officers at military preparatory schools. Because of his close relationship with many senior Bolivian officers, Wimert

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was often privy to officers’ frustrations, which extended to the political realm. Colonel Lechín, a member of General Ovando’s military staff, visited Wimert in August 1961, speaking in the name of General Ovando about how it would be “necessary to establish a military junta” if the MNR did not get rid of gangsters and communists. In his comments to Army intelligence, Wimert attributed Lechín’s comments to “blowing off steam” about the Paz government. Nonetheless, Wimert realized that the military had the power to overthrow the government if it had the collective will to do so, something that the military certainly could not have done a few years before.50 The attitude in the embassy was a tacit acknowledgment that rearming the military had its dangers. Undoubtedly, Bolivia was more stable and was a more powerful anticommunist force. But as Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) Stutesman put it, aiding the military meant possible coups “like night follows day.” It is clear from examining the record that embassy officials felt rearmament was a “risk worth taking.” Douglas Henderson, ambassador to Bolivia from 1963–1966, summed up the problem but minimized the likelihood of a coup: In supporting the Bolivian military with training and equipment we are always faced with the dilemma that too little support encourages the extreme leftists while too much could encourage the military to take matters into their own hands. The embassy does not believe the latter point has been reached, or is it likely to be reached in the near future… There is no question that our military assistance has been deeply appreciated by the Bolivian armed forces…[but] U.S. military assistance to Bolivian is not, repeat not, increasing the danger of military takeovers51

What is clear from the dispatches and interviews was that Wimert and the U.S. embassy understood the political implications of strengthening the military. Wimert had often heard military officers’ frustration with the political system. He also often saw first hand the military’s attitude toward the MNR— an attitude that would cause them to overthrow the regime. Wimert would leave Bolivia in mid-1963, more than a year before the coup. His fellow attaché, Edward Fox, would become closely associated with the general most responsible for the golpe, General René Barrientos. Their relationship, and the November 1964 coup, will be addressed next. *** Like Wimert, Edward Fox was a Latin American expert. A World War II veteran, he served two combat tours in Europe and flew air missions during the D-day operation. After the war, the Air Force needed an officer to go down to Bolivia to determine why the Bolivian Air Force was having so many accidents.52 While on this mission, he also set up a pilot instructor course and training program in Santa Cruz. There he met then-Lieutenant Barrientos.53 Fox first served in Bolivia from 1952 to 1955. After another assignment, he worked as control officer for all air attachés in Central and South America

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from 1958 to 1960 and was reassigned as air attaché to Chile from 1960 to 1962 before being posted back to Bolivia. Barrientos was primarily responsible for getting Fox reassigned to Bolivia. In 1962, Fox was the assistant air attaché in Santiago, Chile. Upset that there was no air attaché in Bolivia and two in Chile, Barrientos requested that Fox be posted to La Paz. Fox, knowing that his old friend was the head of the Air Force, readily agreed to return to Bolivia in late 1962. Fox had all the qualifications and credentials needed to be an attaché— fluency in Spanish, long familiarity with Latin America and his host country, close relations with important Bolivian officers, and work in Washington dealing with attaché management and intelligence analysis. He knew how to collect intelligence as well as what the U.S. embassy, the Pentagon, and decisionmakers in Washington required of attachés. He seemed the perfect air attaché to represent the United States in Bolivia. Fox’s reputation was excellent, both with the embassy and the Bolivians. Along with Wimert, DCM Stutesman considered the two to be the best attachés he had ever served with. They both worked very closely with his staff, especially with the political-military sections.54 The Bolivian officers respected Fox for his fluency, confidence, and no doubt, close relationship with Barrientos. Major General Edward Lansdale visited Bolivia in May 1963 at the invitation of General Andrew O’Meara, Commander of U.S. Caribbean Command. In his after-action report, Lansdale mentioned that the Bolivians held Fox in special affection, referring to him as the “Zorro of the Andes.” As an aside, he remarked, “those who know Latin American temperaments will understand the esteem associated with Zorro.”55 Fox’s closest contact, General Barrientos, became a key player in the Bolivian political scene in 1962. Fox’s arrival corresponded to Barrientos’ rise to power. Born near Cochabamba in 1919 and apparently of humble origin, Barrientos attended public primary and secondary schools in Cochabamba and at nineteen entered the Bolivian Military Academy. From 1943 to 1962 he served in a variety of assignments, including air attaché to London and the United States, commander of the Santa Cruz Aviation School, and professor of air force science at the Bolivian Command and General Staff School. Paz named him Air Force Chief of Staff in 1960. Long regarded as a popular personality in the Bolivian armed forces, in 1960 Barrientos began to see himself as a political leader. His aspirations stemmed in part from a desire to improve the status of the Bolivian armed forces. After the coup, he would say that his actions in the early 1960s stemmed from a desire to eliminate the misrule and corruption of Paz and the MNR. By 1962, Barrientos’ political ambitions were becoming increasingly obvious. He spent a good part of both years in the Cliza Valley near Cochabamba, establishing a political base with the campesinos of the region. In these activities he used his ability to speak Quechua, the native Indian language, to his advantage.

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After Fox arrived in Bolivia, he traveled with Barrientos. In an October 1962 dispatch, for example, Fox described the political general. Barrientos had invited Fox to the Cliza Valley because he wanted to show the American how much he was liked and how strongly the Indians felt about him. After Fox received permission from the embassy and upon his arrival, Barrientos afforded him first-class treatment, and gave him a car and driver, a luxury that normally only Paz received. The general had used civic action funds to build schools and recreation centers. Fox described how, upon entering the town where the school was located, Barrientos was greeted with abrazos by the intendente and the alcalde. He proceeded to speak in Quechua to about a thousand gathered Indians on the importance of education, bettering their living conditions, and strengthening the military. As a sop to Fox, he made sure that the Indians understood that the effort was a joint Bolivian-U.S. one.56 Fox was impressed with Barrientos, commenting that the entire weekend of activities was most successful and that the general had put on “quite a show.” Fox was happy that Barrientos praised civic action, was building schools and advocating education. Fox also understood, though, that the general was carefully building up his popularity in these areas with the clear intention of future political gain and was currying favor with the United States.57 The result of Fox’s friendship and initial trips with Barrientos in 1962 was that the air attaché came to see Barrientos’ candidacy for vice president as the best possible outcome for Bolivia—a position he continually advanced to both the U.S. embassy and to his superiors in Washington. Fox’s influence would eventually swing the U.S. embassy behind the Barrientos candidacy after miners took four Americans hostage in late 1963. In a number of dispatches, the attaché’s views on the Air Force general’s candidacy come into focus: he viewed the general as dedicated to civic action and the only man who could “get things done,” a leader who could unite the officer corps, a future politician who would support democracy and President Paz, a reformist who would displace the obstructionist oligarchs, an anticommunist who would remove Marxist sympathizers, and a peacemaker who could effectively control the campesinos and miners—the two groups most identified with the internal disorder in the countryside. Several of his dispatches stressed these points. Barrientos’ support of civic action and his desire to better the armed services convinced Fox that he was a man of action. In a January 1963 dispatch to DIA, Fox noted that in Barrientos’ struggle to improve the Bolivian armed services, the general had twice in the past couple of weeks tendered his resignation in order to draw attention to the lack of funding and inability of the military to carry out U.S. civic action programs. To Fox’s satisfaction, Barrientos garnered support with the MNR and Paz and received additional government funds in the 1963 budget. Fox commented that Barrientos’ actions, while reflecting a show of strength, were positive because “the military

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has been beaten down and kow-towed by strong political pressures for the past ten years.” The 1963 budget now reversed the trend that Fox saw as so destructive to the military. Barrientos’ actions also boded well for Bolivia because he possessed “a million dollar personality, is a terrific orator, and is loved throughout Bolivia.” To Fox, Barrientos was the only person in Bolivia who could get things done—the evidence was there: civic action and a rebuilt and confident military.58 Last, the general was refreshingly different from the obstructionist oligarchs who wanted nothing better than to “see Bolivia continue along the anarchic course it had taken over the last couple of years.”59 His popularity (unlike that of Paz) would unite the country as no other politician had. In another of Fox’s trips to the Cliza valley, he observed the general distributing USAID sewing machines and dedicating a recreation center. Fox gushed that the general had “gained the love and respect of a great number of Indians, built and dedicated rural schools and playgrounds, preached the need for educating a younger generation, and [urged] that the people should put down their guns and stop fighting.”60 In addition to uniting the campesinos behind him, the general-miracle worker would be the only person who would be able to unite the officer corps. A united Bolivian military was important to the United States, both because of the efforts Washington had made in rebuilding the military and in the importance that body had had in the establishment and maintenance of stability. In a DIA report, Fox noted, “there was not one military person whom he had spoken to that expressed any disapproval of Barrientos. They all seem convinced in the Army and Air Force of his honesty of purpose in wishing to better the educational, health, and social condition of the workers of Bolivia, particularly the peasant class.”61 The Bolivian armed forces, which had a political cell within the MNR party, duly nominated Barrientos as their candidate for the vice-presidency in October 1963. For Fox it was significant that Generals Ovando and Jorge Cerruto, the two highest-ranking officers in the Army, headed the body that nominated him. This nomination indicated that Barrientos had the support of the leading powers within the armed forces. The following day, the noncommissioned officers called for the expulsion from the MNR military cell of all critics and opponents of General Barrientos and for the cell’s adherence to the Paz/Barrientos formula for the 1964 elections. Fox understood that one of the main reasons why Barrientos received the officers’ support was that they appreciated the advantages and benefits to be gained in pay, housing, and personal standing with Barrientos in high office. The lack of rivalry or jealousy on the part of other generals boded well for the general and showed his great popularity and strength. This support would prompt Fox to note, without reservation, that “Barrientos as vice-president represents the feeling of the great majority of the armed forces.”62

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Fox was encouraged that Barrientos did not seem to want to seize power for himself. The general was not going to be the typical Latin American caudillo on horseback. In his most forceful memo to date, Fox observed that the general was honest in political affairs and a genuine democrat. Fox dismissed the notion that Barrientos would attempt a coup against the MNR, stating that a golpe was very unlikely based on the previous actions and statements of the general. Barrientos was “one hundred percent loyal to Paz and not interested in power for himself.”63 Fox’s observations meshed with what the general had been telling the embassy for a number of years—that the military was a democratic force not interested in seizing power. In early 1962, for example, Barrientos called Ambassador Stephansky and stressed that given “tradition,” the armed forces could never successfully govern Bolivia because they did not have “the proper support.” The military’s main interest was to bolster a government that upheld the ideals of democracy and the goals of the revolution.64 Aside from upholding democracy, Barrientos seemed to be the only person who could control the heavily armed campesinos and the miner militias who, in the United States’ view, caused the chaos in the countryside that made Bolivia vulnerable to communist infiltration. In Washington’s eyes, a proU.S. person who could control the miners and militias was by definition the best anticommunist. Of Barrientos’ effect in this regard, Fox would write: The campesinos (men especially) seem to be very Spanish in type and temperament. They are easily led by any faction which takes the trouble to appeal to them. After a period of dangerous violence and killings, it is a good thing that Barrientos is able to find the time to talk with them as he does. The combination of his personality, ability to speak to them in simple direct terms in Quechua, and the fact that he is top brass, with easy access to USAID schools, literature, ect. is very fortunate for the country. Barrientos has played a leading part in the pacification of the Cliza Valley and has put an end to the shootings in the back, hanging of soldiers, gouging out of their eyes and other nocturnal pleasantries which previously occupied the campesinos. The peasants have now seen the light and are playing football against each other for a huge cup donated by Barrientos… At the arrival of the General they cheer “Viva Paz Estenssoro! Viva el General Barrientos! Viva la Pacificacion del Valle!”65

Fox noted that Barrientos was not as effective with the miner militia but “may well succeed in winning some of their support.” As long as the miners were good listeners they would eventually swing their support behind the general. As noted earlier, though, the ambassador and others were not as convinced as Fox of the purity of Barrientos’ ideals and were reluctant to endorse him as the best choice for vice president. As Fox noted “the ambassador was not as positive as I was regarding Barrientos’ candidacy. In hindsight, and rightly so, he viewed the general as an opportunist, non-democrat. I believed, though,

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being closer than anyone to him at the time, that he would not go forward with a coup and that he was the best hope for Bolivia.”66 The embassy continued to view Barrientos with caution and hesitance until four Americans were taken hostage by miners in December 1963. The Johnson administration relied heavily on Barrientos to put pressure on the miners to win their release. When the Americans were eventually freed, a great deal of credit went to the general, and a grateful ambassador, echoing the sentiment of his president, swung his support behind Barrientos for vicepresident. The most important consideration in the hostage crisis for the U.S. was the initiative Barrientos showed in trying to resolve the crisis. Barrientos, circumventing diplomatic channels (as he told U.S. officials, he could not “officially speak for the government of Bolivia”), flew to the U.S. Caribbean Command in Panama and then on to Washington in an attempt to resolve the crisis. In Panama, he requested military equipment that would be needed because, as he reiterated, the “miners are as well, if not better equipped, than the government.” He requested ammunition, equipment and clothing.67 In Washington, in consultation with the Assistant Secretary of State for InterAmerican Affairs, Barrientos vowed to do everything possible to resolve the crisis. The Secretary responded that the U.S. would make “every effort to provide rapid help in line with the president’s offer to give full help to guarantee the safety and obtain the release of the hostages held by the miners.” The Secretary thanked Barrientos. In his memo of conversation written afterwards and forwarded to Secretary Rusk, he expressed his appreciation that someone in Bolivia was doing something about the crisis.68 Ambassador Henderson realized the extent of the State Department’s gratitude. A highly impressionable man, whose overall goal seemed to be to please his superiors and keep his position, Henderson swung his position from neutral to pro-Barrientos. Fox’s arguments were equally effective. Fox viewed the general as the only force in Bolivia for progress and the only man who could, in the attaché’s words, “get things done.”69 The actions of the United States in the aftermath of Barrientos’ failure to win the vice presidential nomination come into clearer focus given the changed U.S. attitude toward the general. In January at the party convention, Paz, who did not wish to have someone as blatantly political as Barrientos on the ticket, convinced the party faithful to nominate a party functionary, Federico Fortún, as vice president. When Barrientos, despite the rejection, continued to campaign, Paz gave him an ultimatum to either give up politics or leave the Air Force. Two days later, someone attempted to assassinate Barrientos. He was hit by what Kenneth Lehman and other authors refer to as a magic bullet—” ‘magic’ not only [because it was deflected] by his U.S. Air Force wings but…also for the way it revived his moribund vice-presidential candidacy.”70 Ambassador Henderson, acting on a recommendation by Fox, had the general airlifted to Panama to be operated on by Bolivian doctors.71

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Historians such as Lehman and Dunkerley have seen the shooting and subsequent evacuation as being planned by both Barrientos and the United States. They claim the scheme was aimed to help put the general back on the Paz ticket by discrediting Fortún (who was blamed by the military for the shooting), rallying support of the military behind Barrientos, and thus forcing Paz to dump Fortún.72 Historians point to the rapidity of the Air Force general’s rise to the vice presidency after his month of recuperation in Panama as evidence of Washington’s collusion with Barrientos. Instead of some elaborate machinations, however, the truth is more prosaic. Based on interviews with Fox and recently declassified documents, it appears that Barrientos was seriously wounded. Henderson supported Barrientos’ evacuation because he felt that the general was a positive force for stability in Bolivia. Preserving the general’s life was worth the effort, especially given Barrientos’ role in the hostage crisis. When Barrientos returned and was made Paz’s running mate, Henderson was pleased. But there was no collusion in this event. Ironically, in the months after Barrientos’ return both Henderson and Fox would regret their role in helping him obtain the vice-presidency. Barrientos proved to have few of the positive qualities Fox had initially seen. Rather, he was a caudillo who desired power for himself. The two Americans came to this conclusion after observing Barrientos from March until the 4 November 1964 coup. Understandably, because of their friendship, Fox changed his mind about the general later than Henderson. The first portent regarding the general was ironically with the military. Fox had reported that Barrientos had the full support of the armed forces. On 28 February, Henderson had lunch with the commander of the Bolivian armed forces, Ovando. The general said that his greatest worry at the present was Barrientos’ return to the country. He said that it would divide the armed forces and give the anti-Paz forces a heroic figure with strength in the country. Because of Barrientos’ instability, his return would prove disastrous. He said he had talked to President Paz regarding this issue and he hoped that Barrientos would decide not to return himself. This conversation with Ovando caused Henderson to conclude that the Air Force general was in fact dividing his military colleagues, a view that contradicted Fox’s.73 Barrientos also did not seem to fully support Paz, contradicting as well Barrientos’ claim just a few months before that he was “one hundred percent behind the president.” In a meeting between the two Bolivians in late March, Paz felt it necessary to remind the general, “now that they were running mates, they must stick together and talk the same language.” Their conflict centered on recognizing Cuba. Barrientos was for an immediate, wellpublicized break. Paz advocated patience. Barrientos, furious with Paz, stated, “the Cuban issue in Bolivia is a Bolivian problem and that the U.S. is very much concerned over the problem all over Latin America and that he was sick of the United States ambassador throwing that problem into our faces at every meeting.” Paz did not react to the outburst.74

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Henderson was not impressed with this contrived pro-U.S. statement from the general and in a stinging criticism, he made his thoughts clear to Secretary of State Rusk. On Barrientos: The character, strength and weaknesses of General René Barrientos inject a new, and in many ways, a disturbing note into Bolivian politics. His primary characteristic is unpredictability, based on a lack of a political philosophy … His egocentrism, ambition, and naivété are only partly offset, in terms of U.S. interests in a relatively stable Bolivian political scene, by his (present) willingness to listen to U.S. advice.

And on the possibility of a military coup by the general: He is capable of deceiving himself into thinking he should risk a constitutional military coup as being in Bolivia’s best interests. He is also capable of playing a double game with us in the innocent belief that he is being Machiavellian. He is not foresighted nor coldly calculating enough to estimate his chances accurately…and if he won, [his tenure] would probably be brief.75

Fox, despite these incidents and the convictions of his ambassador, continued to support Barrientos until late May, when Barrientos overplayed his hand. In the days leading up to 18 May 1964, President Paz paid a visit to Ambassador Henderson telling him that he had heard rumors that Barrientos was planning a coup in Cochabamba with the help of fellow Air Force officers. Anticipating a possible golpe, Henderson and Fox drafted a memo to Secretary of State Rusk to protect themselves in case of a coup: Embassy telegram 1495 contains substance of all major elements of past conversations with Barrientos. Since the air attaché had on previous occasions, at my instructions, made amply clear to Barrientos our opposition to military coups and juntas even headed by him… I must therefore avoid putting myself in position which would allow Barrientos to allege that I had offered him support against Paz.76

Fox then traveled to Cochabamba at Henderson’s request to try to stop the coup. He was met at the airbase by a frantic Barrientos asking how he found out about “it.” Fox demurred, telling Barrientos he did not know what the “it” was referring to. Fox then candidly told the general: “René, you know that I know all that goes on here.” The general replied: “Ed, we know that you know our situation very well but this is top secret and the officers here are frightened and feel that you or your ambassador have told the president about our plan to overthrow the government on the 20th of this month.” Fox assured the anxious Barrientos that neither the ambassador nor he had told Paz of any such plan and that the President must have heard it from

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some other source. Obviously relieved, the general asked Fox for his advice. The attaché counseled that “he was not about to get into Bolivian politics but suggested that he use his head for something other than a hat rack.” Fox pointed out to Barrientos that many Bolivians esteemed him and thought that he could solve all their problems. Bolivian problems, however, were complex. Barrientos should appreciate the task President Paz has to accomplish. This would best be done under democratic auspices.77 In effect, Fox stopped the coup. After this incident, he viewed Barrientos differently. He began to see him less as a democrat and more as a typical military caudillo. From his election as vice president in late March to the ticket’s inauguration in May and up to the coup, Fox and the embassy continued to chronicle Barrientos’ growing problems with Paz. At the same time, Fox continued to warn the general that a coup would not be tolerated. In a conversation with the general on 14 July, Fox reported to the embassy and DIA that Barrientos claimed that he was supporting Paz and the MNR party even though he did not agree with the president’s policies. His time would come, he would tell the attaché, because “Paz is old and I am young.” The complete disillusionment of Fox with Barrientos is evident in his dispatch when the attaché referred to the deteriorating relationship with Paz as a “sad situation.”78 The evidence of Fox’s disillusionment with Barrientos after the attempted coup in May contradicts all previous historiography on the relationship between the two men. Most historians have accused Fox of colluding with Barrientos, hoping for the overthrow of Paz, and of being the CIA station chief in Bolivia. Through recently declassified records and interviews with Fox,79 it is clear that none of this is true. Fox initially thought that Barrientos was the best hope for a democratic Bolivia but the attaché changed his mind after the May coup attempt. Fox’s friendship with Barrientos did not mean that he would go as far as to support his takeover by golpe. On him being the CIA station chief, Fox vigorously denied this charge as well: [authors have] said that I was a secret weapon for the U.S. with Barrientos, that General [Vernon] Walters [attaché to Brazil] and I were two pistol packing military attachés responsible for the overthrow of three to four governments. I was not CIA, but we attachés worked closely with the CIA to get an overall picture of what went on in Bolivia.80

Despite the clear message that the ambassador and Fox gave to Barrientos that a coup would not be tolerated, the political situation steadily worsened. Paz and Barrientos were inaugurated on 6 August 1964. Almost immediately, the Paz government faced outbreaks of disorder and discontent. Barrientos seemed to pay little or no role in the decisions of the cabinet, spending most of his time in Cochabamba. In reaction to the disorder, Paz decreed a state of siege, imposed press censorship in La Paz and arrested and deported a number of opposition leaders, including former President Hernán Siles.

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The split between Paz and Barrientos widened as a result of the state of siege. In early October, a telegram from Barrientos to Paz was published in the La Paz press. The general called for the president to lift the press censorship, as the measure affected the prestige of the armed forces. Annoyed, Paz replied immediately that the measure had nothing to do with the armed forces and suggested that the general take more interest in his work as vice president than publicly criticize the government actions. As reports of the feud grew louder, Barrientos steadfastly maintained his position of detachment. The general’s continued detachment from Paz in September and October seemed to the embassy to be a harbinger of a coup—a coup that the United States began to feel that they had little chance of preventing. Dispatches in September and October reflect this pessimism. In a 9 October dispatch to Secretary Rusk, Henderson summed up his feelings on Barrientos. “The sharp deterioration of relations between the president and vice president stimulated speculation [that] Barrientos had decided to make his move to depose Paz by force.” The ambassador ended by noting that Barrientos was unpredictable and that he had no way of knowing the general’s position.81 Fox and the ambassador did not know what to expect from Barrientos. When would he attempt to overthrow Paz? He had tried to do so in May and was stopped by Fox. The general seemed more unpredictable than in the past. Barrientos did not disappoint. Fox was accompanying the general in Cochabamba when Barrientos asked Fox to be airlifted out of the country because he was sick. After some questioning, Fox determined that Barrientos, seeing the pressure building up, wanted to absent himself from the country when the military attempted a coup in his name. The general planned to return after the golpe as the constitutional successor to Paz.82 Having grown increasingly disillusioned with Barrientos since the aborted May coup, Fox recommended later that day that the ambassador refuse the airlift. Henderson concurred and sent a memo to Secretary of State Rusk urging this policy and broaching the possibility that a coup might occur in the next couple of days. The U.S. would not be “made party to Barrientos’ machinations.”83 Paz would last only a few more days. On 3 November, Army and Air Force units stationed in La Paz staged a revolt. These units backed down within a few hours, but the revolt spread to pro-Barrientos units in Cochabamba. That night, Paz learned that he could no longer count on the armed forces in La Paz and made arrangements to leave the country the following day. The next day, Paz departed and Barrientos and General Ovando took over. What is clear from the declassified documents and interviews is that neither Fox nor the embassy were involved in the overthrow. In fact, up to the 4 November coup, both Fox and the ambassador discouraged Barrientos on many occasions from launching a golpe—in May, in conversations between May and October, and in late October. Scholars who have looked at this

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incident, such as James Dunkerley, have flatly stated that Fox worked for the CIA and aided Barrientos in the coup. He and others also contend that Henderson and Fox were not working with each other to prevent a coup.84 This was simply not so. Henderson and Fox concurred on the importance of sustaining democratic government. Both supported Secretary Rusk’s insistence that the U.S. government not support coups. There was no conspiracy. Yet, as stated earlier, Fox had too closely associated himself with Barrientos, exposing him and the U.S. government to accusations of collusion with the military. Fox’s friendship with Barrientos and what eventually happened to Paz also served to reinforce cynical views of U.S. involvement in Latin America during the Cold War. There was no doubt that Fox embodied all that the U.S. expected or would hope to expect in an attaché—fluency, understanding of the local scene, and close friendships with senior military officers. However, in the case of Fox’s relationship with Barrientos, it is obvious that an attaché can become too close to the political situation and allow his personal feelings to obfuscate the real situation. Given the U.S. hegemony in the region, this friendship could easily be equated with undue influence from the “Colossus of the North.” *** What conclusions can be drawn from the attachés’ performance in Bolivia from 1960–1964? First, Wimert and Fox no doubt had the skills that U.S. policymakers wanted from attachés. Wimert could establish friendships quickly through his riding skills, his friendly and open manner, and his willingness to share the hardships of the Bolivian officers in the field. He made up for his lack of fluency with his other strengths. Fox was the ultimate attaché operator—fluent, savvy, and close friends with the top military leader in Bolivia. The attaches effectively reported on the Bolivian internal situation, the effectiveness of rebuilding that military, and the political implications of a strong military on the Bolivian executive. Fox, in particular, gave the U.S. embassy and Washington an inside look at the most powerful military man in Bolivia, René Barrientos. Wimert and Fox were also very effective in pushing their views and recommendations to policymakers in Washington. Wimert was instrumental in the U.S. decision to rebuild the military and then warned of the political impact of the rebuilding effort. Fox effectively pushed for backing Barrientos as vice president in early 1964—seeing the general as the best hope for stabilizing an otherwise chaotic situation in Bolivia. Barrientos’ evacuation for treatment after the “magic bullet” incident, while not a contrived incident by the U.S. to put the general back on the presidential ticket, demonstrated U.S. interest in ensuring the long-term viability of Barrientos. The fact that Fox misjudged his friend so badly speaks to the problem of friendship clouding judgement. Fox was so mesmerized by Barrientos’ work

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with civic action and his ability to rally the campesinos and military officers to his side with his “million dollar personality” (using Fox’s words) that he was blinded by this grandstanding. Fox and the ambassador changed their minds after the May 1964 coup attempt. However, by that point, Barrientos was already elected as vicepresident. Fox and Henderson could do little to convince the general that a coup was now not in his best interest. From May to November, the U.S. was increasingly resigned to a coup. The embassy would not help the general gain power, but they could not prevent it. The actions of the embassy in rejecting Barrientos’ airlift request in late October prove this view. Fox, while having the skills the U.S. desired, was not good enough to see through Barrientos. He placed himself too close to a very political general. While not involved in the 4 November coup, Fox was (in the eyes of most scholars) guilty by association. Fox should have been more cautious. U.S. influence made Bolivians particularly sensitive to the U.S. presence. Fox’s actions fueled rumors that he wanted Barrientos to become the military ruler. While Fox wanted the general to succeed, he hoped that his friend would do so in a constitutional fashion, subordinate to the president. Unfortunately for the U.S. (and for Fox), Barrientos’ coup has been portrayed as a U.S. undertaking. This is false. But the U.S. can certainly be accused of underestimating the general and unwittingly helping him.

Conclusions

There are divergent assessments of attaché performance during the Cold War. One position holds that military attachés to Latin America lacked the training and cultural awareness necessary to understand their host country and military counterparts. These authors claim that attachés failed to establish contacts and foster confidence with their foreign military counterparts and as a result were ineffective as intelligence gatherers. In contrast, various books and reports, mostly by former government officials, argue that U.S. attachés accurately reported on the military situation of their host country. Some of these authors claim that attachés’ reports were the most reliable and accurate of all information gathered by the U.S. intelligence community. Of the two points of view, which is the most accurate? Or do both have a degree of validity? A person reading only chapters two and three might conclude that attachés were woefully unprepared to report on political-military matters. Chapter one noted that the attaché’s job since the 1880s had primarily focused on military reporting—for that was the subject in which the attaché was best trained and equipped to report. In fact, attachés in the pre-World War II period did a more than adequate job reporting on military developments overseas. Their dispatches may not always have been read or acted on by the military and civilians in Washington, but for the most part their observations accurately reflected what was happening on the ground. Rarely did attachés report on political-military matters. Those who did were immediately told to turn their attention back to military issues. Those who ignored this directive and persisted were disciplined. While not all officers who supervised the attachés in the War Department agreed that attaches should avoid political subjects, there was tacit acknowledgment among senior officers that political-military affairs were ancillary to the overall intelligence collection plan. A reader might conclude in studying the history of the attaché corps before World War II that there seemed little reason why this dynamic should have changed in the post-World War II era: attachés 125

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should have continued to report only on military issues because that was what their training best prepared them to do. The chapter on the training and education of attachés (chapter two) continues along this same line of reasoning—the attaché’s lack of adequate training to effectively report on complex political-military issues. Six months of foreign language training at the Defense Language Institute made many of them little more than amateur linguists. The Strategic Intelligence School lacked in-depth country training and instruction by seasoned former attaches who had served in Latin America. Moreover, the new attachés did not have mentors at the SIS who could alert them to the challenges they would face in the region. The training did not prepare them to do their jobs properly. In addition, the armed services considered attaché duty to be an “out of the way” assignment and did not promote attachés at the same rate as those in more traditional duties. Ambitious officers would often avoid attaché duty. Even those officers who did choose this mission knew that their promotion rested on what they had done before that assignment. They realized the importance of going back to line duty as quickly as possible. A natural conclusion would be that the attaché corps attracted mediocre officers and trained them poorly—a recipe for failure. From anecdotal evidence it seems that eligibility criteria was routinely relaxed by military assignment officers and that the best officers did not go into attaché duty. Certainly, any attaché failure because of training and selection criteria must be blamed to a degree on the military. The Pentagon asked attaches to report on political-military issues without giving them the training to do so. They also did not assign the attaché in-country for an adequate amount of time to understand the culture. An officer was routinely rotated back to the United States after a two to three year tour rather than kept on for four years or more. When he arrived, the officer he was replacing often had already returned to the States. Sometimes continuity files were not left. Moreover, attachés were asked not only to file dispatches on political issues that involved the military, but also to continue to observe military maneuvers, report on bridges, river systems, geography, and airstrips. The attaché guide, the BID, contained more than a thousand different subjects and detracted from the attaché’s political-military reporting. The military did not have the luxury of instructing the attachés simply to report on military matters alone. In the 1950s, the majority of Latin American governments were either ruled by the military or the military wielded a large influence in the running of the government. Attachés, because they were also military officers, were uniquely positioned to report on their military counterparts. The NCA, U.S. embassies, and State Department expected attaches to report on foreign militaries and their involvement in politics. This study has shown that there were indeed shortcomings in attaché politicalmilitary reporting. Colonels McCormick and Bevan (Guatemala) and Treadway (Cuba) came to their host countries with only the training provided by DLI

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and SIS. Although they seemed well intentioned and hard working, they did not have the skills to report accurately on complex political-military matters. They failed to master Spanish and had to rely on English speaking foreigners who often gave a skewed perspective of events in their host countries. Treadway could overcome his linguistic shortcomings in Cuba because almost all Cuban officers spoke English and were friendly with U.S. officers.1 In Guatemala, however, fewer officers knew English and a significant group of officers were opposed to the United States or at least wary of speaking with U.S. officers for fear of losing their jobs. In McCormick’s case, his inadequate Spanish proved to be a liability in his quest to “get the story right.” On the other hand, other attaches did report accurately and effectively. Attachés such as Major Chavez (Guatemala), Colonels Wimert and Fox (Bolivia), succeeded in establishing close, personal relationships with their foreign counterparts. Their political-military reporting was perceptive and accurate because they brought “skills to the table” that they obtained outside of the services’ training system. Chavez was Hispanic and had served in Central America during World War II. Wimert had served a tour in Venezuela as a riding instructor. His equestrian skills made him extremely popular with the Bolivians. Fox had served in Bolivia in the early 1950s and befriended the future Bolivian Air Force Chief of Staff. All of these attachés genuinely respected their hosts; this appreciation could not be taught in any school. They served in Latin America because they enjoyed what they were doing— promotion was of secondary importance. These attachés succeeded despite the system. Yet, authors such as Kenneth Lehman and James Dunkerley would argue that their “success” was the problem. Officers, such as Colonel Fox, who were politically savvy, became so close to highly political generals, and could become implicated by association in the overthrow of a legitimately elected government. Lehman and Dunkerley indirectly indict the excesses of a system that theoretically could produce a better attaché—one who knew the language, the customs, and had close personal contacts with military officers. Such a system might produce more Fox’s. Better to have fewer Fox’s, they would argue, than more.2 And yet, was Fox simply doing what he was told by his ambassador and the DIA? The U.S. ambassadors to Bolivia and Fox’s superiors at DIA were both well aware of his actions. Fox was never told to break off contact with Barrientos. They heartily approved of his actions and rewarded Fox for his skill and hard work. Henderson kept Fox on as Air Force attaché until 1966. The DIA promoted Fox to full colonel and made him the defense attaché to Spain in the late 1960s. Thus, any blame that Fox may shoulder for the overthrow comes back on the government institutions that sanctioned his actions. The above discussion warrants a brief recapitulation of how attachés were tasked—what they were told to report on. What is clear from examining these case studies is that attachés, when given clear guidance, reported as

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instructed. Attachés assigned to Cuba concentrated on Cuba’s military readiness in terms of hemispheric defense because that was what their superiors wanted. Fox continued his reporting on Barrientos with the approval of his superiors. One might argue that Chavez seemed to be the exception. He reported on political-military issues despite the lack of guidance. But, his superiors did not tell him to stop either. The attachés wrote what they did because it was important to their superiors. Attachés knew that if they reported on subjects which were not important or contrary to U.S. policy they would be ignored at the least, or at worst subject to a letter of censure. Their careers were not worth the risk of censure. They stayed within the bounds they were given. Attachés were policy advocates to the extent that they added to or strengthened the arguments of their superiors. In the case of Cuba, the attaché’s arguments urging the lifting of the embargo corresponded with JCS policy. The same can be said for Wimert’s advocacy of rearming the Bolivian military in the early 1960s. Wimert’s championing of this cause fit well with the desire of the Kennedy administration to strengthen Latin American governments against communist subversion. Fox’s support of Barrientos seemed to have been made independently of guidance from his superiors. But even Fox’s attitude toward the general was reflected in larger U.S. policy at the time, which sought to strengthen staunch anticommunists such as Barrientos. Thus, the question of whether or not attaches should be policy advocates may beg the question—they always seemed to act within the bounds of U.S. policy to the region. Indeed, attachés were not entities unto themselves. They operated in their host country with the assistance of other members of the country team. An attaché’s success in collecting information hinged on their ability to cooperate with other members of the embassy. For the most part there was a free exchange of information between representatives of the various U.S. agencies. This was certainly the case in Bolivia. In Guatemala there was friction between Colonel McCormick and the CIA station chief who refused to supply information because of the classified nature of CIA operations. In Cuba there was significant infighting among the attachés, CIA, and Foreign Service officers. But attaches were sometimes their own “worst enemies.” Because of inter-service rivalries and the desire to “get the story first,” attachés at times did not even share information amongst themselves. This infighting would prove detrimental to officers such as McCormick, who relied on skilled linguists like Chavez to establish contacts, provide intelligence, and help confirm or deny the reliability of sources. Even with an attaché such as Chavez or Fox and with a perfectly functioning country team, their reports would be of marginal use if the Pentagon, State Department, and other agencies that organized, analyzed, and disseminated attaché reports were deficient. In chapter two, there seemed to be some weaknesses in the bureaucratic systems in the Pentagon and the State

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Department—especially at the level of the desk officer. The Pentagon in particular did not assign high quality analysts as desk officers. But in the case studies, information of importance seemed to reach the highest levels when so needed. Why was this so? It may have had to do with the redundancy built into the reporting systems, the “saving grace” of the bureaucratic system. The information flowed through multiple conduits. Attachés could file their dispatches through the State Department, their regional military command, as well as the Pentagon. Attachés also responded to tasks both from their desk officer and from the ambassador. In effect, the desk officer, the ambassador, and the regional military commander served as checks on one another. Aside from memoranda, interviews with attachés conducted for this study document instances where Tier II agencies both did and did not utilize attaché expertise. Manuel Chavez recalled being ordered to Washington to conduct a special intelligence mission for the CIA. The CIA valued Chavez’s contacts with Guatemalan military officers and his accurate dispatches. Likewise, McCormick expressed his frustration with the way the CIA “froze him out” of the operation. Clearly, CIA officers did not think McCormick had valuable information to tell them. On the other hand, these same agencies also showed a propensity to discount attaché information when it did not fit their views. For example, CIA officials ignored Captain Philip Klepak’s advice to lift the arms embargo, much to the frustration of the naval attaché and his army counterparts in Havana. So which group of scholars is right regarding the attachés? Most likely both views have some truth. By examining the case studies it is clear that an attaché’s “success” depended on his skills, the situation and environment he operated in, what guidance he was given, and how long he was present to report and affect the situation. Chavez was successful but left early. McCormick might have done better in an environment in which there was not the tension between the president, the military, and the United States. Fox was effective but not necessarily successful. Of course, final judgment also depends on how one defines “success.” Allen Dulles had a much different definition of success than those authors who implicate Fox in the overthrow of Paz.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

What are the implications of this study for the attaché system and larger U.S. intelligence community? It is not within the scope of this study to summarize all the changes in attaché training since 1964. But what is clear from this study is that the best attachés were those who had extensive Latin American experience and were fluent in Spanish or Portuguese. They were “built” over time by being given increasingly responsible positions in their region of expertise. Colonels Fox, Chavez, and Wimert had served in Latin America

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previously as junior officers. When they came back for a second tour in more senior positions, they were prepared for the increased responsibilities and pressures. The U.S. intelligence community would be best served by developing more officers such as Fox, Chavez, and Wimert. Strides have been made. The Army, for instance, in the 1960s started to develop a coterie of area specialists through the Foreign Area Officer (FAO) Program—where officers attend graduate school, language school, and live one year in-country before they assume any position overseas.3 More recently, the Army adopted Officer Professional Management System XXI (OPMS XXI), which promotes FAOs at the same rate as their contemporaries in the line army.4 OPMS XXI should develop a generation of officers with expertise in Latin America and other regions. The Air Force, Navy, and Marines have not implemented an OPMS XXI-type system and would be well served by doing so.5 The agencies for decision-making at the Pentagon and the State Department responsible for organizing, analyzing, and disseminating attaché reports worked fairly effectively in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, with the advent of computers and high-speed information networks, information flow has become less of a problem. An incompetent desk officer has even less of an opportunity to impede the flow of information. The problem today seems to be the excess of information, not just from attachés and other intelligence sources, but also from other sources such as the media and the “world-wideweb.” The need for competent analysts to sift through all this information and produce useable estimates has never been greater than at the present.6 More research on military attachés during the Cold War is warranted. After President Bill Clinton’s 1995 executive order on declassification, future researchers should have greater access to attaché dispatches and intelligence collection methods.7 Studies looking at attaché reporting in other regions of the world would shed further light on the role of the attaché during the Cold War. Hopefully this study will spur further interest in America’s overseas military ambassadors.

APPENDIX 11

Hypothesis: Why Potential Generals Don’t Want To Be Attachés

YEARS OF SERVICE A. Officer enters senior service (war) college, where he is told that one of every four will become a general (many believe it). B. Officer is selected for colonel. To bolster his chances for general, he seeks a highly visible assignment. There are two types: command and Washington staff. Only in one of these will he be seen by enough generals to have a chance of selection (generals make the selections). C. Prime year for selection to general, based on analysis of recent lists. Between B and C, officer wants only highly visible assignments and is sharp enough to see that he gets one and stays with it. D. Last year for selection for general officer. Officer, if not selected, looks around for satisfying job for twilight years. Because of lead-time in preparing for and being on attaché tour, he must make up his mind quickly. E. Last time an officer could possibly go on attaché duty. F. Retirement

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APPENDIX 22

Expected Levels of Absolute Speaking and Reading Proficiency in Languages Taught at the Foreign Service Institute Group I: Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Haitian Creole, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Rumanian, Spanish, Swedish.

Group II: Bulgarian, Dari, Farsi, Greek, Hindi, Indonesial, Malay, Urdu.

Group III: Amharic, Bengali, Burmese, Czech, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Lao, Nepali, Polish, Russia, Serbo-Croatian, Thai, Tamil, Turkish, Vietnamese.

Group IV: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean

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APPENDIX 33

Absolute Language Proficiency Ratings

The rating scales described below were developed by FSI to provide a meaningful method of assessing the language skills of government personnel. Unlike academic grades, which measure achievement in mastering the content of a prescribed course, the S-rating for speaking proficiency and the R-rating for reading proficiency are based on the absolute criterion of the command of an educated native speaker. A person with an S–3 in both Chinese and Spanish, for example, should have equal linguistic competence in the two languages. All ratings could be modified with a+, indicating that proficiency substantially exceeds the minimum requirements for the level involved but falls short of those for the next higher level. DEFINITIONS OF ABSOLUTE RATINGS

Elementary Proficiency S–1 Able to satisfy routine travel needs and minimum courtesy requirements. Can ask and answer questions on topics very familiar to him; within the scope of simple questions and statements, allowing for slowed speech; speaking vocabulary inadequate to express anything but the most elementary needs. Any person at the S–1 level should be able to order a meal or ask for shelter or lodging. R–1 Able to read some place names, street signs, office and shop designations, numbers, and isolated words and phrases. Can recognize all the letters in the printed version of an alphabetic system and high-frequency elements of a syllabary or character system. Limited Working Proficiency S–2 Able to satisfy routine social demands and limited work requirements. Can handle with confidence but not with facility most social situations including introductions and casual conversations about current events; can handle limited work requirements, needing help in handling any complications or difficulties; can usually handle elementary constructions quite accurately but does not have confident control of grammar. R–2 Able to read simple prose, in a form equivalent to typescript or printing, on subjects with a familiar context. With extensive use of a dictionary can get the general sense of routine business letters or international news items. 133

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Appendix 3

Minimum Professional Proficiency S–3 Able to speak the language with sufficient structural accuracy and vocabulary to participate effectively in most formal and informal conversations on practical, social, and professional topics. Can discuss particular interests and special fields of competence with reasonable ease; comprehension is quite complete for a normal rate of speech; errors never interfere with understanding and rarely disturb the native speaker. R–3 Able to read standard newspaper items addressed to the general reader, routine correspondence, reports and technical material in his special field. Can grasp the essentials of articles of the above types without using a dictionary. Has occasional difficulty with unusually complex structures and low-frequency idioms. Full Professional Proficiency S–4 Able to use the language fluently and accurately on all levels normally pertinent to professional needs. Can understand and participate in any conversation within the range of his experience with a high degree of fluency. Errors of pronunciation and grammar are quite rare; can handle informal interpreting from and into the language. R–4 Able to read all styles and forms of the language pertinent to professional needs. With occasional use of a dictionary can read moderately difficult prose readily in any area directed to the general reader; can read legible handwriting without difficulty. Native or Bilingual Proficiency S–5 Speaking proficiency equivalent to that of an educated native speaker. Has complete fluency in the language such that his speech on all levels is fully accepted by educated native speakers in all of its features. R–5 Reading proficiency equivalent to that of an educated native. Can read extremely difficult and abstract prose, as well as classic literary forms. Can read all normal kinds of handwritten documents.

Notes

INTRODUCTION 1.

2.

3. 4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

9.

See for example, Truman Smith, Berlin Alert: The Memoirs and Reports of Truman Smith (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1984); and Ivan D.Yeaton, Memoirs of Ivan D.Yeaton, USA, 1919–1953 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1976). Bruce W.Bidwell, History of the Military Intelligence Division, Department of the Army General Staff: 1775–1941 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1986), 388. Peter H.Smith, Talons of the Eagle: The Dynamics of U.S. Latin American Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 117. Scholars have been preoccupied with the role of the Latin American military since the 1960s. The treatment of this exceedingly complex issue is voluminous. See for instance the bibliographic essay in Linda A.Rodríguez’s, Rank and Privilege: The Military and Society in Latin America (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1994). Ibid., x. There have been few, if any, works on attaches during the Cold War. There has been scholarly interest as demonstrated by the twenty or so monographs, dissertations, and articles published on attaches in the pre-World War II period. The problem of declassifying documents on U.S. intelligence activities in the Cold War era has been well documented elsewhere. See for example, George Herring, “My Years at the CIA,” Speech to the American Historical Association, January 1997; and Anna K.Nelson, “History with Holes: The CIA Reveals Its Past,” Diplomatic History 5 (Summer 1998): 503–508; See also Wilbur Edel, “Diplomatic History—State Department Style,” Political Science Quarterly 106 (Winter, 1991–Winter 1992), 695–712. The lack of finding aids is due to personnel shortages at the National Archives. See for example: Scott D.Breckinridge, The CIA and the U.S. Intelligence System (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986); Lyman B.Kirkpatrick, The U.S. Intelligence Community: Foreign Policy and Domestic Activities (New York: Hill and Wang, 1973); Patrick J.McGarvey, CIA: The Myth and the Madness (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1973); Victor Marchetti and John D.Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York: Laurel, 1983); John Prados, President’s Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations from World War II Through Iranscam (New York: Quill/William Morrow, 1988). See for example, Thomas G.Mahnken, “Piercing the Fog of Peace: U.S. Intelligence and Foreign Military Innovation 1918–1941” (Ph.D. diss., The Johns Hopkins University, 1997); Scott A.Koch, “Watching the Rhine: U.S. Army Military Attaché

135

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Reports and the Resurgence of the German Army, 1933–1941” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1990); John F.Votaw, “United States Military Attachés, 1885–1919: The American Army Matures in the International Arena” (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 1991); Maureen P.O’Connor, “In the Eye of the Beholder: Western Military Observers from Buena Vista to Plevna” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1996); W.Karin Hall, “Truman Smith: United States Military Attaché, An Examination of His Career” (MA Thesis, San Jose State University, 1992); Kim M.Juntunen, “U.S. Army Attaches and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939: The Gathering of Technical and Tactical Intelligence” (MA Thesis, Temple University, 1990); Michael A.Henderson, “Thomas Dresser White and the United States Military Attaché System, 1927–1935” (MA Thesis, The Pennsylvania State University, 1994); David M. Glantz, “Observing the Soviets: U.S. Army Attaches in Eastern Europe during the 1930s,” The Journal of Military History 55 (April 1991):153–184; Brian G.Shellum, “Captain Charles Young in Hispaniola, 1904–1907: Point Man for an Invasion (Unpublished Paper, DIA Historians Staff, 1998). 10. David Kahn, “U.S. Views of Germany and Japan,” in Knowing One’s Enemies: intelligence Assessment Before the Two World Wars, ed. Ernest May (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 478. 11. Scott A.Koch, “The Role of U.S. Army Military Attaches Between the World Wars,” Studies in Intelligence 38 (1995), 1. 12. Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Larmon Wilson, “The United States and the Dominican Civil War: The Challenge to InterAmerican Relations,” (Lecture given at the School of International Affairs, Columbia University, November 1966); Richard K.Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977); Christopher M. Andrew, “Whitehall, Washington and the Intelligence Services,” International Affairs LIII (1977), 391–392; Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New York: Summit Books, 1983), 281; Victor Marchetti and John D.Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. 13. Bidwell, 269. Bidwell’s work on post World War II attachés is in draft form at the Center for Military History, Washington, DC. See also, Harry Howe Ransom, Central Intelligence and National Security (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959); Allen Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence (New York: Harper and Rowe, 1963). 14. Confidential Report, U.S. Department of the Army. General Staff, G–2 “The Army Attaché System,” 22 October 1953, U.S. Army War College Archives, Carlisle Barracks, PA. 15. I.B. Holley, Ideas and Weapons: Exploitation of the Aerial Weapons by the United States During World War II: A Study in the Relationship of Technological Advance, Military Doctrine, and the Development of Weapons (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1953), 176. The author would like to thank Scott A.Koch for an informal discussion with him regarding U.S. military attachés and for the inspiration to use the Holley model. 16. Ibid. 17. These trends are outlined in each country’s chapter summary. 18. Several authors have utilized a similar framework in analyzing attaché reporting. David Glantz, for example, studied U.S. Army Attaché reporting in Eastern Europe during the 1930s. His central question was how accurately they assessed specific trends or events in the Soviet military.

Notes

137

19. Richard K.Betts, “Analysis, War, and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures are Inevitable,” World Politics 31 (October 1978): 61–89. 20. Different community members sometimes differed on specific conclusions reached in the NIEs and would insert dissenting opinions as footnotes to the text. This study assumes that unless footnoted, State and Defense concurred with the particular NIE. 21. Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954, 246. The author notes, “at no moment did PBSUCCESS assume that the exiles would be able to defeat the Guatemalan army.” In the CIA’s opinion, the Army was the key to the stability of the Arbenz regime and would easily defeat Castillo Armas and his rebels if they so wanted. 22. Jim Handy, Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, 1944–1954 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 169; See also, Zachary Karabell, Architects of Intervention: The United States, the Third World, and the Cold War, 1946–1962 (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1999), 92–135; Nicholas Cullather, Operation PBSUCCESS: The United States and Guatemala, 1952–1954 (Washington, CIA Historians Office, 1998); Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (New York: Anchor Books, 1983); Richard Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), 3–7; Cole Blasier, The Hovering Giant: U.S. Responses to Revolutionary Change in Latin America, 1910–1985 (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), 228– 31; and Thomas M.Leonard, “Nationalism or Communism? The Truman Administration and Guatemala 1945–1952,” Journal of Third World Studies 7 (Spring 1990): 169; This story is not only the core of these major books on the coup but also the essence of most passing references to the coup in larger works. See Susanne Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991); John Prados, Presidents’ Secret Wars, 98–107; David Wise and Thomas Ross, The Invisible Government (New York, 1964), 167–83; William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History (London, Zed Books, 1986), 77–88; Stephen G.Rabe, “The Clues Didn’t Check out: Commentary on ‘The CIA and Castillo Armas’,” Diplomatic History XIV (Winter 1990): 87–95; Andrew Schlewitz, “Explaining Militarism: The Case of Guatemala, 1931–1966” (CIAO Working Paper Series, New School for Social Research, 1997). 23. Robert O.Kirkland, “The Cuban Military, 1952–1958: A New Perspective,” in MACLAS Latin American Essays XI, ed. Judy McInnis (Newark, DE: University of Delaware, 1998), 63–79. 24. Louis J.Pérez, Army Politics in Cuba, 1898–1958 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976); Rafael Fermoselle, The Evolution of the Cuban Military: 1492–1986 (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1987), 249–250; Robert Taber, M26: Biography of a Revolution (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1961); Ramón L. Bonachea and Marta San Martin, The Cuban Insurrection: 1952–1959 (New Brunswick: Transaction Press, 1974); See also Hugh Thomas, The Cuban Revolution (New York: Harper &: Row, 1977); Jorge Domínguez, “The Batista Regime in Cuba,” in Sultanistic Regimes, ed. H.E.Chehabi and Juan J.Linz (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1998); Wayne S. Smith, The Closest of Enemies: A Personal and Diplomatic Account of U.S.-Cuban Relations since 1957 (New York: W.W.Norton, 1987); Thomas G.Paterson, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

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25. Robert Alexander, Bolivia: Past, Present and Future of Its Politics, (New York: Praeger, 1982); James Malloy and Sylvia Borzutzky, “The Praetorianization of the Revolution: 1964–1967,” in Modern Day Bolivia: Legacy of the Revolution and Prospects for the Future, ed. Jerry Ladman (Tempe: Center for Latin American Studies, Arizona State University, 1982), 43–58; Christopher Mitchell, The Legacy of Populism in Bolivia: From the MNR to Military Rule (New York: Praeger, 1977); James Dunkerley, Rebellion in the Veins: Political Struggle in Bolivia, 1952– 1982 (London: Verso, 1984); William Brill, Military Intervention in Bolivia: The Overthrow of Paz Estenssoro and the MNR, (Washington: Institute for the Comparative Study of Political Systems, 1967); Cole Blasier, “The United States and the Revolution,” in Beyond the Revolution: Bolivia Since 1952, ed. James Malloy and Richard Thorn (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsbrugh Press, 1971), 95–97; Naoki Kamimura, “The United States and the Bolivian Revolutionaries, 1943–1954: From Hostility to Accommodation to Assistance” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1991); Jennifer Leigh Bailey, “Dependent Revolution: The United States and Radical Change in Bolivia and Cuba” (Ph.D. diss., University of Denver, 1990); Kenneth Lehman, Bolivia and the United States: A Limited Partnership (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999); Robert O.Kirkland, “United States Assistance to the Bolivian Military, 1958–1964” (Paper presented at the Middle Atlantic Conference of Latin American Studies, Trenton, NJ, March 1998).

CHAPTER ONE: THE ATTACHÉ CORPS IN THE PRE-COLD WAR ERA, 1888–1945 1. See for example: O’Connor, “In the Eye of the Beholder: Western Military Observers from Buena Vista to Plevna;” Alfred Vagts, The Military Attaché (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967). 2. John C.D’Auria, “The United States Military and Naval Attaché Corps: 1885– 1914” (Student Thesis, Joint Military Intelligence College, 1995), 12. See also John Prout, Unpublished research paper on the origins of the U.S. attaché corps (DIA Historians Office, 1992), 10. 3. Martin Van Creveld, Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present (New York: Free Press, 1991), 167–175. 4. William C.Davis, Dual Between the First Ironclads (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1975), 4–5. 5. Scott A.Koch, “Watching the Rhine,” 54. 6. Bidwell, 54; Elizabeth Bethel, “The Military Information Division: Origin of the Intelligence Division, Military Affairs 11 (Spring 1947): 18. 7. Russell F.Weigley, History of the United States Army (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984), 276. 8. Walter LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad 1750 to the Present (New York: W.W.Norton, 1994), 251. 9. Votaw, 54. 10. Memorandum to the Adjutant General from the Officer in Charge, MID, Major Arthur L.Wagner, 28 September 1897, RG 165, National Archives, Washington, D.C., cited in Shellum, 4–5. 11. James F.Lacy, “Origins of the United States Advisory System: Its Latin American Experience, 1922–1941” (Ph.D. diss., Auburn University, 1977), 10.

Notes 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

139

Lacy, 11. Shellum, 5. Bidwell, 60. Brigadier General Tasker H.Bliss, President of the Army War College, to Chief, Second Division (MID), 14 January 1904, Article 84; Army War College Correspondence, RG 165, National Archives (hereafter NA), cited in Shellum, 7. Shellum, 10. To the conscript mass armies of the European powers, such solutions could mean the difference between victory and defeat in any general war, the difference between national survival and general destruction. See, John T. Greenwood, “The American Military Observers of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905)” (Ph.D. diss., Kansas State University, 1971), Introduction. Robert A.Doughty and others, Warfare in the Western World: Military Operations Since 1871 (Lexington, MA: D.C.Heath, 1996), 516–521. D’Auria, 75. U.S. War Department, Annual Reports for the Fiscal Year ended June 30, 1905, 14 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1905), 386, cited in Votaw, 106 W.G.Lyddon, “History of the British Military Missions to the U.S. during the World War,” Part II, “Military Attaché,” RG 165, MID 2121–179, cited in Votaw, 135. Votaw, 160. Mott Papers, Virginia Historical Society, report number 8, 7 December 1917, cited in Votaw, 175–6. Votaw, 177. Defense Intelligence Agency, “Defense Attaché System, 1975–1980, Volume 1,” June 1974, DIA Archives, Washington, D.C. Weigley, History of the United States Army, 400. Ibid. Ibid., 403. H.W.T.Eglin, “The Military Attaché,” Congressional Digest 120 (January 1924), cited in Koch, “Watching the Rhine,” 128. Bidwell, 258. Koch, “Watching the Rhine,” 65. U.S. Congress, House, War Department Appropriations Bill for 1936 Military Activities, Part 1, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., 1935, 125, cited in Koch, “Watching the Rhine,” 66. Koch, “Watching the Rhine,” 65. Ibid., 60. Robert D.Schulzinger, American Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 146–166. Robert G.Paterson, J.Garry Clifford, and Kenneth J.Hagan, American Foreign Relations: A History Since 1895, Volume II, 4th ed. (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1995), 176–178. Glantz, 181–183. Henderson, 47. Thomas Dresser White to Colonel Charles Burnett, Washington, D.C., 15 January 1935, Item 1001440, White Collection; Thomas Dresser White, Moscow to “Abe,” 28 October 1934, Item 1001439, White Collection, cited in Henderson, 43–4. Glantz, 181–183. Sir Kenneth Strong, Intelligence at the Top: The Recollections of an Intelligence Officer (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1969), 61, cited in Koch, “Watching the Rhine,” 131–2.

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42. See for example: Mahnken, “Piercing the Fog of Peace: U.S. Intelligence and Foreign Military Innovation, 1918–1941.” 43. Strategic Intelligence School, “Suggested Script Commandant’s Address of Welcome 27th Class, Strategic Intelligence School,” 9 November 1953, SIS Course File 1945–1954, Box 24, RG 319, NA. 44. Memorandum for the Chief of Staff from E.H.Crowder, Judge Advocate General, 3 March 1916, RG 94, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780– 1917, Box 1234, Langhorne File, cited in Votaw, 151. 45. Memorandum from Lt. Col. Robert Eichelberger, Secretary, General Staff, to Colonel Francis H.Lincoln, Assistant Chief of Staff, G–2, 1 December 1936, “Military Attaché System,” MID 2610–178/1, cited in Koch, “Watching the Rhine,” 69. 46. Koch, “Watching the Rhine,” 69. 47. Ibid. 48. Votaw, 15. Educational criteria developed over time, mainly from the recommendations of attachés themselves. Lieutenant Colonel William M.Colvin, a successful attaché in Stockholm following World War I, listed three principal educational qualifications for attachés: 1) Well-grounded in history and international law. 2) Speak French fluently. By fluently, it is meant that they can carry on conversations with ease and without difficulty. 3) To possess tact and judgment.

49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58.

Colonel William F.H.Godson, military attaché at Berne, Switzerland, urged that future attachés should “understand that the American point of view alone is not sufficient; it must be accompanied with a thorough understanding of the point of view of the people of the country he is going to live.” French should be mastered as well as the native language of the host country because there were “valuable acquaintances available to him in the diplomatic corps generally.” The ideal attaché would be a man of culture, a linguist, and a seasoned professional soldier. Adjutant General to Bigelow, 19 July 1902; reply from Bigelow to Adjutant General, 27 July 1902, RG 165, file 444825, NA, cited in Duria, 61. Votaw, 17. Votaw notes in his text that in contrast to most by-name requests, this one was turned down. Colonel G.Williams, “Study of the Military Attaché System,” individual Staff Memorandum, 2 April 1928, G–2 Course 1927–1928, Army War College, 6–7. Copy at U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA, cited in Koch, “Watching the Rhine,” 139. Koch, “Watching the Rhine,” 133. Bidwell, 381. U.S. Congress, Hearing Before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, 79th Congress (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), Part 27, 55, cited in Koch, “Watching the Rhine,” 66. Koch, “Watching the Rhine,” 145 Alfred Vagts, The Military Attaché (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 85. See Ivan D.Yeaton, Memoirs of Ivan D.Yeaton, USA (Stanford: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 1976). Scott A.Koch, “The Role of U.S. Army Military Attachés Between the World Wars.”

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CHAPTER TWO: THE ATTACHES, THEIR DUTIES, RESPONSIBILITIES, EDUCATION, TRAINING, AND ATTITUDES 1945–1964 1. On the importance of political-military reporting see Raymond J.Barrett, “The Role of the Military Attaché,” Military Review XLXI (May 1971):50–55 and “Politico-Military Expertise: A Practical Program,” Military Review XLVI (November 1966):45–51; Memorandum of Discussion at the 410th Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, 19 June 1959, Foreign Relations of the United States-Latin America (hereafter FRUS), 1958–1960 XVI, 97–102. 2. Army Regulation 611–60, “Assignment to Army Attaché Duty” (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 6 October 1975), 1. Army regulations regarding attaché duty did not change much during the Cold War era. See for example Army Standing Administration Instructions for Army Attachés (STADIN), 30 September 1955; and Memorandum, War Department, “Qualifications for Assignment of Military Personnel for Duty with the Military Attaché System,” 26 February 1947, HRC 210.681, Military Attachés, Center for Military History Archives, Washington, D.C.; both of which for intensive purpose are the same as the 1975 instructions. 3. Solis Horwitz, “Military Members of the Country Team” (Washington, DC: Department of State Bulletin, 16 August 1965), 268; See also Strategic Intelligence School, “Suggestive Script, Commandant’s Address of Welcome, 27th Class, Strategic Intelligence School,” 9 November 1953, SIS Course File, 1945–1954, Box 24, RG 319, NA. 4. Wendell W.Blancke, The Foreign Service of the United States (New York: Praeger, 1969), 150; See also Linda S.Frey and Marsha L.Frey, The History of Diplomatic Immunity (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999), 575–576. 5. U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Appropriations, Department of Defense Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1970, Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations on H.R. 15090, 91st Congress, 1st Session, Part 1, 830. 6. Vincent M.Barnett, The Representation of the United States Abroad (New York: Praeger, 1965), 158. 7. Lyman B.Kirkpatrick, “Is United States Intelligence Answering the Red Challenge?” Vital Speeches XXVII (15 January 1961):209. 8. Ransom, Central Intelligence and National Security, 18. 9. Air Force Manual 36–1, Officer’s Classification Manual (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Air Force, 28 May 1969), A4–5. 10. W.H.Packard, “The Naval Attaché,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, April 1965, 131. 11. Phillip Klepak, interview by author, 25 May 1999, telephone conversation; Dr. Russell Ramsey, U.S. Army School of the Americas, interview by author, 20 May 1998, telephone conversation. 12. Air Force Manual 36–1, A4–5. 13. President John F.Kennedy, letter to American Ambassadors, 29 May 1961. 14. U.S. Department of State, The Country Team, An Illustrative Profile of Our American Missions Abroad, A Department and Foreign Service Series 136 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, April 1967), 9. 15. Charles D.Ameringer, U.S. Foreign Intelligence: The Secret Side of American History (Lexington: DC Heath, 1990), 228–230. 16. Confidential Memorandum (hereafter Conf Memo), Department of Defense Directive, “Military Service Attachés,” 22 June 1956, DIA Archives, Washington, D.C. 17. Ibid.

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18. Gary McClellan, Defense Intelligence School, interview by author, 17 June 1998, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C. 19. Conf Memo, Department of Defense Directive, “Military Service Attachés,” 22 June 1956, DIA Archives, Washington, D.C. 20. Ted Togashi, Defense Intelligence Agency, interview by author, 28 May 1998, Washington, D.C. 21. Ibid. For an opposing view see Richard R.Hallock, “The Country Team and the Problem of Coordination of United States Foreign Operations: An Organizational Appraisal” (Student Thesis, U.S. Army War College, 1964). 22. Horwitz, “Military Members of the Country Team,” 268. 23. Conf Memo, Department of Defense Directive, “Military Service Attachés,” 22 June 1956, DIA Archives, Washington, D.C. 24. Conf Instruction, Defense Intelligence Agency Instruction Number 60–5, “Defense Attaché System,” 7 July 1965, DIA Historian’s Archive, Washington, DC. 25. Lionel Krisel, interview by author, 28 May 1999, telephone conversation. Hook was resented by the attachés for not providing information but also for going “native” or putting the interests of Cuba above that of the United States. On the problems with MAAGs see Edward W.McGregor, “The Ugly American Military Advisor” (Student Thesis, U.S. Army War College, 1960). 26. In the book arena, see Marchetti and Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence; McGarvey, CIA: The Myth and the Madness. 27. Conf Memo, Department of Defense Directive, “Military Service Attachés,” 22 June 1956, DIA Archives, Washington, D.C. 28. This directive not only applied to the CIA but was also designed to foster cooperation between the different service attachés, which at times because of interservice rivalries, hampered the sharing of intelligence information. 29. Interestingly, when CIA officers attend or speak at the DIA’s Defense Intelligence School, they are often astounded that attachés can get any valuable information at all without paying for it. 30. John T.Fishel of Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, interview by author, 26 May 1998, National Defense University, Washington, D.C. 31. Conf Memo, Army Attaché, Guatemala to ACofS, G–2, “CAS Guatemala,” 8 February 1954, Box 50, Secret Project Decimal File, RG 319, NA. 32. Conf Memo, ACofS, G–2 to Army Attaché, Guatemala, “Submittal of Additional Advance Copy of Certain R-Reports,” 4 March 1954, Box 66, Project Decimal File, Record Group (hereafter RG)319, NA. 33. Ameringer, 185–187. 34. Secret Memorandum (hereafter Sec Memo), Department of the Army General Staff, “Collection Planning and the Department of the Army Intelligence Plan,” January 1952, Strategic Intelligence School 1945–54, Box 6, RG 319, NA. 35. Gary McClellan, Defense Intelligence Agency, interview by author, 17 June 1998, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington DC. 36. Basic Intelligence Directive, June 1946, Military Intelligence Division, War Department, Washington, D.C. Military Reading Room, NA. 37. See for example: Strategic Intelligence School, “Cable Communications,” SIS 1945–1954, Box 6, RG 319, NA; War Department Basic Intelligence Directive (BID), Instruction 1. 38. Conf Memo, ACofS, G–2 to Army Attaché, Guatemala, “Submittal of Additional Advance Copy of Certain R-Reports,” 4 March 1954, Box 66, Project Decimal File, RG 319, NA.

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39. On the importance of the desk officer see Letter, Colonel C.H.Dayhuff to Major General William W.Quinn, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, 29 May 1959, Box 135, Permanent Retention Files, 1918–1963, RG 319, NA. 40. Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 395. 41. The Office of National Estimates of the CIA was the day to day organization which prepared the NIE for formal IAC approval. The IAC would meet about once a week to approve the NIE prepared for that session. Donald P.Steury ed., Sherman Kent and the Board of National Estimates: Collected Essays (Washington: Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA, 1994), 56. 42. Ameringer, 190. 43. Steury, 112. Some fans of the NIE were Robert Cutler, Eisenhower’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs and Robert McNamara, Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense. See also Conf Memo, Robert Cutler, “Intelligence Reports,” 12 March 1953, National Security Council Staff Files, Executive Secretary Subject Files Series, Box 17, Eisenhower Library (hereafter EL). 44. Steury, 57. Sherman Kent also noted that at times the ONE “invited and listened to ambassadors, officers of the foreign aid program, attaches, members of the numerous military assistance groups, CIA officers, and many others.” See for example NIE-84, “Probable Developments in Guatemala,” 19 May 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, Volume IV, 1061–1071. 45. Ibid, 191. 46. At the Eisenhower Library, for instance, there are memoranda of telephone conversations between President Eisenhower and Secretary of State J.F.Dulles and many other officials to include the Director, CIA and the head of the NSC. 47. Sherman Kent, who headed the Board of National Estimates for the CIA, estimated that an NIE took about a week to produce and any more than fifty per year would erode the quality and value of the NIE. See Steury, 64. 48. Jeffrey Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Ballinger, 1989), 295–304. 49. Herbert C.Huser, National Defense University, interview by author, 26 May 1998, National Defense University, Washington, D.C. 50. Qualification for Assignment of Military Personnel for Duty as Attachés, 26 February 1947. 51. Defense Intelligence Agency, “Defense Attaché System 1975–1980,” June 1974, Defense Intelligence Archive, DIA Historians Office, Bolling AFB, Washington D.C., III–G–3; See also Bill G.Rippy, “A Study of the Air Attaché” (Student Thesis, Air Command and Staff College, 1965), 29. 52. “The Defense Attaché System 1975–1980,” III–G–5. 53. Ibid., III–G–4. 54. Ibid., III–G–18. 55. Donald M.Marks, “Air Attaché: Realistic Selection and Meaningful Training” (Student Thesis, U.S. Air Force War College, 1968), 59–60. 56. Ibid. 57. Joseph D.Cooper, “Some Recommendations for the Improvement in Training and Utilization of the Air Attachés” (Student Thesis, U.S. Air War College, 1966) 14–15. 58. “Defense Attaché System,” III–G–11. 59. Ibid., III–G–13. 60. Rippy, 26. 61. Defense Intelligence Agency, “Report on Selection and Training of the Military Attaché Groups,” Defense Intelligence Agency Historians Archive, Bolling AFB, Washington, D.C., 4.

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62. War Department, “Qualifications for Assignment of Military Personnel for Duty with the Military Attaché System,” 26 February 1947, HRC 210.681 (M/A), CMH Archives, Washington, DC., 5 63. Rippy, 26. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. Dr. Russell Ramsey noted that attachés avoided Latin America because they considered it to be an “armpit” assignment. Dr. Russell Ramsey, U.S. Army School of the Americas, interview by author, 20 May 1998, telephone conversation. 66. Cooper, 26. 67. Ibid., 27. 68. Defense attaché system, III–G–39. 69. George A.D’Angelo, “The Contemporary Role of the Military Attaché and Problems Relating to the Attainment of a Quality Corps” (Masters Thesis, Texas Tech University, 1972), 81. 70. Charles L.Bishop, “The Air Attaché—A Personnel Enigma” (Student Thesis, U.S. Air Command and Staff College, 1974), 45. 71. Ibid., 43. 72. Ibid. 73. Stephen D.Nice and others, “Screening and Selection of Military Attachés,” 31 October 1979, Department of Defense, Directorate of Budget and Finance, Military Interdepartmental Purchase Request DSAM 80008, DTIC number 1354090. 74. Ronald K.Bell and others, “An Examination and Evaluation of the Defense Attaché Personnel System” (Student Thesis, National War College, 1983), 24. 75. C.S.Rice, “Can the United States Air Force Better Utilize the Experience of Its Attachés?” (Student Thesis, U.S. Air Command and Staff College, 1953), 2. 76. Ibid., 5. 77. “Selection and Training of Military Attaché Groups,” 4. 78. Letter Colonel D.C.Cubbison Jr. to Major General William W.Quinn, Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, 14 May 1959, Box 135, Permanent Retention Files 1918–1963, RG 319, NA. 79. Rice, 4. 80. Ibid., 5. 81. Ibid. For other opinions on improving desk officers see Staff Memorandum, Second Command Class, Command and Staff College, “Military Attachés, Recommended Change in Selection and Maintenance,” 11 July 1946, CGSC Library, Accession #R–13699, Fort Leavenworth, KS. 82. George P.Champion, “We Can Improve the Air Attaché System” (Student Thesis, U.S. Air Force War College, 1952), 18. 83. On the importance of understanding foreign cultures see Harlan Cleveland and others, The Overseas Americans (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), 293. 84. Richard A.Grussendorf, “Requirements of an Air Attaché” (Student Thesis, U.S. Air Force War College, 1948), 3–4. 85. Department of the Army, Army Almanac 1950, Center for Military History, 399. 86. Defense Intelligence Agency, “Program of Instruction for 30–A–F3 Attaché Course,” Defense Intelligence Agency Historians Archive, Bolling AFB, Washington, DC, iv–vi. 87. Rippy, 35–36. 88. Ibid., 36. 89. Ibid., 38. 90. Ibid.

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91. Defense Language Institute, “Defense Language Institute Unit History 1963–1973,” Center for Military History, Washington D.C., 1. 92. Ibid., 3. 93. Ibid. 94. Ibid., 8. 95. Ibid., 9 and 11. 96. Defense Intelligence Agency, “Defense Attaché System 1975–1980, Annex H,” June 1974, Defense Intelligence Achieve, DIA Historians Office, Bolling AFB, Washington D.C., III–H–13. 97. Champion, 13. See also Alfonse R.Miele, “Armed Forces Language in Peacetime (Since World War II)” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1958). 98. D’Angelo, 58. 99. D’Angelo, 61. For a more recent view on this subject see General Accounting Office Report to the Secretary of the Army, “Weaknesses in the Resident Language Training System of Defense Language Institute Affect the Quality of Trained Linguists,” 6 May 1982, GAO/FPCD–82–22. 100. “Defense Attaché System 1975–1980, Annex H,” III–H–39. 101. Ibid., III–H–23. 102. On how linguists would have to make up for their lack of training in country, see “Extracts from Letters & Field Reports from Officers Serving in Latin America,” Military Assistance Institute, Henry C.Newton Papers, MHI Archives. CHAPTER THREE: U.S. ATTACHÉS, GUATEMALA, AND THE OVERTHROW OF JACOBO ARBENZ, 1950–1954 1. Jim Handy, Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, 169. See also, Zachary Karabell, Architects of Intervention: The United States, the Third World, and the Cold War, 1946–1962 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999), 92–135. 2. Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit, 65–77; See also, Richard Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention, 3–7; Cole Blasier, The Hovering Giant, 228–31; and Thomas M. Leonard, “Nationalism or Communism?, 169; This story is not only the core of these major books on the coup but also the essence of most passing references to the coup in larger works. See Susanne Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala; John Prados, Presidents’ Secret Wars, 98–107; David Wise and Thomas Ross, The Invisible Government (New York: Random House, 1964), 167–83; William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History, 77–89; Stephen G.Rabe, “The Clues Didn’t Check Out: Commentary on The CIA and Castillo Armas’,” 87–95. 3. Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 7. 4. Division of Research for Latin America, “Effect upon Guatemala of Arms Procurement by El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua,” Special Paper no. 21, 12 June 1953, 2–4, enclosed in Armstrong to Cabot, 16 June 1953, NA, cited in Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 246. For other authors who agree with Gleijeses’ contentions see: Richard Adams, Crucifixion by Power: Essays on Guatemalan National Social Structure, 1944–1955 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970), 262–3; Cullather, 22; Andrew Schlewitz, “Explaining Militarism: The Case of Guatemala, 1931–1966.” 5. Despite the embargo, the United States continued to send military advisors to train the Guatemalan armed forces. Although seemingly contradictory to the goals of the embargo, it did allow the U.S. to continue to exert influence on the training of the Guatemalan armed forces.

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6. This desperation accounts somewhat for Arbenz’s decision to buy arms from the Czechoslovakian military in early 1954. 7. For authors who also stress the military-agrarian reform link see for example Douglas W.Trefzger, “De Guatemala a Guate-peor? Guatemalan Civil-Military Relations, 1944–1970,” (Paper presented at the 1998 MACLAS Conference, Trenton, NJ, 9–11 April 1998), 10. 8. Manuel J.Chavez, “Communism in Guatemala,” U.S. Air Force Air Intelligence Digest (July 1953): 33. 9. Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 374. 10. Cullather, 31. 11. The Department of Defense also had a Naval attaché (Captain William Kirten) reporting on Guatemala. Because Guatemala had a very small navy and Kirten’s responsibilities included not only Guatemala, but Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras, the Naval attaché filed very few reports during the Arbenz administration. For this chapter, I will analyze only those services (Army and Air Force) whose attaches filed constant reports. Another source of intelligence in Guatemala was the military assistance advisory groups. The mission of these groups was to train the military on the use of American weapons and tactics; they were not intelligence gatherers per se. They did assist attachés on compiling data on the composition and fighting capabilities of the Guatemalan army. Most mission officers spoke little or no Spanish—nor did they see the reason why they had to. As one air attaché explained to the author, “many Guatemalan officers could speak English and help the advisory group officers with translation. Their value as political-military intelligence gatherers was limited because of their inadequate contacts with senior officers and their military duties which kept them in the field and away from the centers of power.” Wendell Bevan, Interview by Author, Alexandria, Virginia, 25 April 1999. 12. For a summary of Colonel McCormick’s career see, Paul Child ed., Register of Graduates and Former Cadets 1802–1990, (West Point: Association of Graduates, 1990); Regarding sending officers overseas with no previous experience in the region, see William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, The Ugly American (New York, WW Norton, 1958), 274. 13. Aloysius McCormick, interview by author, 1 September 1997, telephone conversation. 14. Ibid. Duty as a Latin American attaché was by consensus seen as a career ending assignment. See for example, Lars Schoultz, National Security and United States Policy Toward Latin America (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1987), 26; See also Ernest E.Hollyfield, “Employment of the Country Team, With Special Reference to Argentina” (Student Paper, National War College, 1966), 40; Robert O.Kirkland, “U.S. Military Attaches and the Guatemalan Coup of 1954,” paper given at the Middle Atlantic Council for Latin American Studies, St. John Fischer College, Rochester, New York, April 2000. 15. Aloysius McCormick, interview by author, 1 September 1997, telephone conversation. 16. Most attachés interviewed for this book praised the language training provided by the Army Language School Institute in California. The main disappointment was that their linguistic skills deteriorated after six months of Intelligence School in Washington. Colonel Aloysius McCormick, interview by author, 1 September 1997, telephone conversation. See also Robert Matthew, Language and Area Studies in the Armed Services: Their Future Significance (Washington: American Council on Education, 1947), 53–90.

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17. Ibid. 18. The rapid turnover of officers sometimes proved disastrous because the men had no training in or commitment to intelligence work. For examples, see, Richard K.Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises, 196. 19. Military Intelligence Division, War Department, Basic Intelligence Directive, June, 1946, Military Archivist Reading Room, NA, 1. 20. Aloysius McCormick, interview by author, 1 September 1997, telephone conversation. 21. Letter, Colonel Chavez to author, 30 May 1999. 22. William Calderhead, interview by author, 10 June 1999, telephone conversation. 23. Manuel Chavez, “Berman (Bernice-Manuel) Experience,” unpublished manuscript, undated. 24. Letter, Colonel Chavez to author, 30 May 1999. 25. Colonel Bevan was a typical air attaché assigned to Latin America. He knew very little Spanish. Since most Central American militaries had small air forces, there was no need to spend inordinate amounts reporting on their air forces. Wendell Bevan, interview by author, 25 April 1999. 26. A complete search of all Air Intelligence files found no letters or feedback from Air Force headquarters regarding the quality of Chavez’s reporting. Chavez concurs that he received little or no feedback from the Air Force. However, this seems not to have discouraged him from continuing to seek intelligence in the political-military arena. 27. Chavez, “Berman Experience.” Chavez was not the only air attaché to use the attaché plane to gain such an advantage. 28. Ibid. Manuel Chavez, interview by author, 15 March 2000, Miami, Florida. 29. Department of the Army, “Latin America’s Military Effort in 1951,” Intelligence Review (February 1952), Box 687, RG 319, NA. 30. Ibid. 31. Conf Memo, ACofS, G–2, “Order of Battle on Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras,” 28 May 1954, Box 181, RG 319, NA; See also Richard Adams, Crucifixion by Power: Essays on Guatemalan National Social Structure, 1944–1966, 263. 32. Aloysius McCormick, interview by author, 1 September 1997, telephone conversation. 33. Intelligence Report #1096476, “Visit to Fourth Military Zone Headquarters, Mazatenango,” 26 September 1952, Box 469, RG 319, NA. 34. Intelligence Report #1097763, “Visit to Guardia de Honor, First Regiment,” 30 September 1952, Box 491, RG 319, NA. 35. Intelligence Report #1097764, “Visit to the Second Regiment (Base Militar)” 6 October 1952, Box 491, RG 319, NA. 36. Intelligence Report #1186827 “Reinforced Infantry Battalion Tactical Exercise,” 28 September 1953, Box 1241, RG 319, NA; On other reports by McCormick and others on the Guatemalan Army see Memo for the Chief of Staff, Army, from Army Attaché, “Summary of Information on Guatemalan Armed Forces,” 25 May 1954; and Memo to Assistant Chief of Staff, G–2, “Order of Battle and Intentions of Guatemala,” 28 May 54, RG 319, NA. 37. United States Caribbean Command Weekly Intelligence Summary, “Guatemalan Army Best Equipped and Drilled in Central America,” 23 August 1951, Box 72, RG 319, NA; See also Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 198. Gleijeses writes that while Guatemala was “hardly an impressive war machine,” it was “stronger than the other rag-tag armies of Central America.”

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38. G–2 Evaluation, Library #1097784, “Visit to the Second Regiment (Base Militar)” 30 October 1952, Box 491, RG 319, NA. The intelligence reviewer, J.Brantley, encouraged McCormick to follow up this visit with subsequent visits which could form the basis for separate reports. 39. G–2 Evaluation Library #1097763, “Visit to Guardia de Honor,” 6 November 1952, Box 491, RG 319, NA. 40. “Latin America’s Military Effort in 1951.” 41. NIE 84, “Probable Developments in Guatemala,” 19 May 1953, FRUS, 52–54, 1067. 42. Conf Memo, Department of State (hereafter DOS), Guatemala City, “President Arbenz Seeks to Reassure Army Officers on Policies of His Administration,” 23 November 1953, Confidential State Department File (hereafter CSDF), NA; U.S. Army Daily Intelligence Brief, 23 November 1953, Box 675, 950000 File, RG319, NA; Conf Memo, DOS, “DOS Memorandum of Conversation [Cabot, Clark Fisher, Guillermo Toriello],” 25 March 1953, CSDF, NA. 43. Intelligence Report 1177551, “Conduct of the Chief of the Armed Forces at Cadet Field Exercises,” 8 April 1953, Box 1082, RG 319, NA. 44. Chavez, “Communism in Guatemala.” 45. General Bevan and Colonel McCormick told words to that effect to the author. 46. For a discussion of the complexity of understanding political-military events see Rodríguez, x. 47. Bernard Rosen, “Counter-Revolution: Guatemala’s Tragedy” The Nation CLXXIX (July 1954):87–9. 48. The State Department and the CIA to a lesser degree had a more nuanced view of the reform than is often recognized. Both were more concerned with the regime’s use of agrarian reform as a political instrument that would radicalize the rural Indian population. Most conceded that as an economic program the reform was necessary. Indeed, the CIA later proposed that a global covert effort to fund land reforms would have achieved the goals of the Guatemalan revolution. 49. CIA, SR–46: “Guatemala,” 27 July 1950, in CIA Research Reports, reel 5 (0090– 0091); See also Kalman Silvert, A Study in Government: Guatemala (New Orleans: Middle American Research Institute, 1954), 219. 50. Department of State, “Agrarian Reform in Guatemala,” 5 March 1953, in OSS/ State, reel 9 (0215). 51. Air Intelligence Report AF428504, “Communist File of Guatemalan Army,” 25 March 1952, Air Attaché reports, RG 341, NA. 52. U.S. Caribbean Command, Weekly Intelligence Summary, “Agrarian Reform Bill Sent to Congress,” 29 May 1952, Box 74, 950000 File, RG 319, NA. 53. ACofS G–2, Weekly Intelligence Reports, 13 February 1953, Box 677, 950000 File, RG 319, NA. 54. “When Communists Take Over,” U.S. News and World Report, 20 February 1953, 15, cited in Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 201. 55. Conf Memo, DOS, Guatemala City, “Joint Weeka 34,” 21 August 1953, CSDF, NA; Richard Adams and Jerrold Buttrey have noted that the Guatemalan officer corps traditionally has relied on income in addition to their military salary. Officers were expected to profit from their military position as well as from private enterprise which could include owning fincas, running commissaries, and the like. Adams, Crucifixion by Power, 240–242. 56. Intelligence Report #1183136, “Creation of New Welfare Department Under the Ministry of Defense,” 20 August 1953, Box 1171; Intelligence Report 118722,

Notes

57.

58. 59. 60. 61.

62.

63.

64.

65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70.

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“Free Entry Privileges for Armed Forces,” 29 September 1953, Box 1253; Intelligence Report #1183147, “Special Privileges in Guatemalan Army,” 18 August 1953, Box 1171; Intelligence Report #1177613, “Pay, Allowances and Special Privileges in the Guatemalan Army,” 26 June 1953, Box 1082—all RG 319, NA; Conf Memo, DOS, Guatemala City, “Joint Weeka 43,” 23 October 1953, CSDF, NA. Intelligence Report #1139149, “Specific Request Control Number ID–35–459,” 2 March 1953, Box 797, RG 319, NA; U.S. Caribbean Command, Weekly Intelligence Summary, “Attitude Toward the Arbenz Regime,” Box 74, 950000 File, RG 319, NA. Chavez, “Communism in Guatemala.” FRUS, 1952–4, “NIE–84, Probable Developments in Guatemala,” 19 May 1953”, 1061. Blasier, The Hovering Giant, 152. Many authors have documented the death of Francisco Arana. The best treatment can be found by reading Gleijeses’ “The Death of Francisco Arana: A Turning Point in the Guatemalan Revolution,” Journal of Latin American Studies 22 (October 1990):527–552; For a brief summary, see Karabell, 97–8. Adams, Crucifixion by Power, 249. Adams sees the cleavage between line and Politécnica officers as one of the oldest and most important in understanding the Guatemalan military. For other analyses of the Arana assassination, see Stephen M.Streeter, “Managing the Counterrevolution: The United States and Guatemala, 1954–1961” (Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1994), 36–7. Air Intelligence Report AF540186, “Conversation with Chief of Guardia Civil,” 10 March 1953, RG 341, NA; In this memo, Cruz Wer complained to Chavez of being turned down by the U.S. government when he wanted to purchase submachine guns. He then bought these weapons from Switzerland. Admitting to Chavez that he was having trouble enforcing order in the rural districts in part because of the U.S. arms embargo was tantamount to saying that the U.S. embargo was effective in preventing a key component of rural agrarian reform from succeeding. Chavez’s superiors in the Air Force and at the Caribbean Command in Panama were pleased, stating that the report gave “another excellent look at the inner circle of the Arbenz government and continues to confirm our policy of restricting arms to those elements in Guatemala who are against our policies.” U.S. Caribbean Command, Weekly Intelligence Summary, “Large Arsenal of Small Arms Reported in Possession of New Agrarian Department Head,” 31 July 1952, Box 73, 950000 File, RG 319, NA. Chavez, “Berman Experience.” Cruz Salazar, after the overthrow of Arbenz, was appointed Guatemalan Ambassador to Washington. After the assassination of Castillo Armas, he returned to run as a candidate for president but was narrowly defeated by General Miguel Ydígoras, who then, surprisingly, appointed him as his Minister of Communications. A few years later he was elected as a congressman, where he served for about five years. Years later he was appointed Professor of Political Science at the University of Guatemala and then wrote political science monographs on Latin American nations. See Air Intelligence Report AF540186, for example. Chavez, “Berman Experience.” Ibid., 140. Air Intelligence Report AF540186, 11 March 1953, “Conversation with the Chief of the Guardia Civil” NA.

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71. Conf Memo, DOS, Guatemala City, 11 December 1953, “Friction Between the Army and the Guardia Civil?” CSDF, NA. 72. Manuel Chavez, interview by author, 29 May 1999, telephone conversation. 73. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, in 1963, would consolidate all the attaches under the DIA. For an excellent discussion of inter-service rivalries see Betts, Soldiers, Statesman and Cold War Crises, 116–128. 74. Manuel Chavez, interview by author, 29 May 1999, telephone conversation. 75. Aloysius McCormick, interview by author, 1 September 1997, telephone conversation. 76. Conf Memo, DOS, Guatemala City, “Weeka 2, Conversation with Colonel Monzón,” 12 July 1951, CSDF, NA. 77. Intelligence Report #1197280, “Additional Information on Colonel Elfego Monzón, 27 January 1954,” Box 354, RG 319, NA. For an additional profile on Monzón see Air Intelligence Report AF626659, “Who’s Who Report of Colonel Elfego Hernan Monzón Aguirre,” 8 July 1954, RG 341, NA. 78. Memo of Conversation (Barrios, Thomas Mann, Edward Clark), 27 May 1952, CSDF, NA, cited in Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 219. 79. Cullather, 31. 80. Ibid.,; (Deleted) to Frank Wisner, “Performance of the U.S. Army Mission and Military Attaché in Guatemala,” 9 September 1954, Job 79–01025A, Box 23, CIA Archives. 81. Ibid. 82. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala, 133; Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 243. 83. Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 243. 84. Conf Memo, MG Arthur Trudeau (G–2) to Colonel McCormick, 29 March 1954, Secret Project Decimal File, Box 171, RG 319, NA. 85. Chavez, “Berman Experience.” 86. Ibid. 87. Interview, Colonel Chavez, 10 March 2000. Chavez’s trip is discussed in Cullather, Operation PBSUCCESS. 88. Ibid. 89. Ibid. 90. CIA Intelligence Report, “Guatemala,” 17 June 1954, NA. 91. Director of Central Intelligence to President, “The Situation in Guatemala as of 20 June,” FRUS 1952–4, 1175. 92. Cullather, 84. CHAPTER FOUR: U.S. ATTACHÉS AND THE CUBAN REVOLUTION, 1952–1958 1. Quoted in Kent M.Beck, “Necessary Lies, Hidden Truths: Cuba in the 1960 Campaign,” Diplomatic History 8 (Winter 1984):45. 2. Robert J.McMahon, “Eisenhower and Third World Nationalism: A Critique of the Revisionists,” Political Science Quarterly, 101 (1986): 469. 3. Louis J.Pérez, Army Politics in Cuba, See pages 146–7 for discussion of corrupt senior officers and pages 155–6 on the inadequacy of the Cuban Army to fight a guerilla war. See also Rafael Fermoselle, The Evolution of the Cuban Military: 1492–1986, 249–250; Robert Taber M26: Biography of a Revolution, 304–5. 4. Pérez, Army Politics in Cuba, 155–6. Pérez notes that “the historic evolution of the armed forces and the hemispheric mission assigned to the Cuban military by the

Notes

5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

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Cold War military planners in Washington hindered counterinsurgent effectiveness.” On the details of Cuban Army performance during Operation Verano see especially Ramón L.Bonachea and Marta San Martín’s The Cuban Insurrection: 1952–1959. Fermoselle, 227. The opposition to Batista primarily came among officers who had graduated from the military academies. See also Hugh Thomas, The Cuban Revolution, 98; Jorge Domínguez “The Batista Regime in Cuba,” 129; I essentially make this same point in an earlier work see Kirkland “The Cuban Military, 1952–1958: A New Perspective,” 63–79; Marifeli Pérez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 57. Quoted in Pérez, Army Politics in Cuba, 161. Pérez probably sees the embargo as the most important factor in the downfall of the Batista government. For a first-hand account of infighting within the U.S. Embassy in Havana regarding the embargo on Batista see Wayne S. Smith, The Closest of Enemies: A Personal and Diplomatic Account of U.S.-Cuban Relations Since 1957, 13–41. Thomas G.Paterson, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 58. See also Harold R.Aaron, “The Seizure of Political Power in Cuba, 1956–1959” (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1964), 178. John J.Johnson, The Military and Society in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), 263; Alfred Stepan, “The New Professionalism and Internal Warfare and Military Role Expansion” in Armies and Politics in Latin America, ed. Abraham F.Lowenthal (New York: Holmes &; Meier Publishers, 1976), 246. John J.Johnson advances the argument that Latin American officers, through U.S. training, would be able to develop “new relationships with the civilian sector…[using] the term ‘civic action.’” Alfred Stepan notes that “the United States would help convert traditional, politicized armies into modern, apolitical ones.” A counter argument to Johnson’s thesis can be found in Lieuwen’s early work, Arms and Politics in Latin America (New York, Praeger, 1961), 206–7. Pérez, Army Politics in Cuba, 168–9. Pérez notes that Batista’s military was built on a poor foundation because of the reliance Batista had on senior political-type officers. Sec Memo, DOS, Havana, 10 January 1953, CSDF, NA. Morris H.Morley, Imperial State and Revolution : The United States and Cuba, 1952–1986 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 58; Regan, 118; Statistics for these figures originate from the Training Division, Military Assistance Program, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Department of the Army and the testimony of E.Perkins McGuire, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Mutual Assistance Programs to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 84th Congress, 2nd Session. Paterson, Contesting Castro, 59; See also Robert O.Kirkland, “U.S. Aid to the Cuban Military, 1952–1958,” Paper given at the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, May 1997. Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, “Weekly Report,” 13 June 1952, 737.00/6–1352, CSDF, NA. Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, 21 August 1952, 737.00/8–2153, CSDF, NA. Ibid. Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, “Weekly Report,” 28 January 1954, 737.00/ 1– 2854, CDSF. Fermoselle, 250. Pérez, Army Politics in Cuba, 148. Assistant Secretary of Defense (Internal Security Affairs), Office of Military Assistance, “Treaties and Agreements, Cuba,” 14 February 1952, RG 330, Box 54, Project Decimal File, NA.

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20. Paterson, Contesting Castro, 59; Assistant Secretary of Defense (Internal Security Affairs), Office of Military Assistance, “Plan VI–FY 1952, Title IV, MDA Material Program,” 26 May 1952, RG 330, Box 69, Project Decimal File, NA. 21. Regan, 124. 22. Ibid., 123. 23. Assistant Sec of Def (Internal Security Affairs), Office of Military Assistance, “Treaties and Agreements, Cuba,” 28 March 1952, RG 330, Box 55, NA; Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, “Semi-Annual Report on Operation and Status of Programs Under the Mutual Security Act of 1951,” 28 January 1954, 737.5msp/1–2854, CSDF, NA. 24. See as examples: Conf Memo, George H.Olmstead, Major General, USA, Director, Office of Military Assistance to Myron M.Cowen, Special Assistant to the Secretary for Mutual Security Affairs, 17 March 1952, 737.5map/3–2452, CSDF, NA; Also, Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, 3 October 1952, 737.00/10–352, CSDF, NA. 25. For example, see Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, “Swiss Material for Cuban Navy”, 13 July 1953, 737.56/7–1353, CSDF, NA; Also, Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, “Cuban Army States No Arms Purchases from the U.S. Pending,” 25 April 1958, 737.00/4– 2558, CSDF, NA; Paterson, Contesting Castro, 97; Michael J.Mazarr, Semper Fidel: America and Cuba 1776–1988 (Baltimore: Nautical & Aviation, 1965), 241. 26. Jane M.Treadway, interview by author, 21 October 2000, telephone conversation. 27. Ibid. 28. Letter, Major Claudio Medel to author, 18 June 2000. 29. Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, “Conditions in the Area near Manzanillo,” 21 February 1958, 737.00/3–2558, CSDF, NA. 30. Harold Aaron, “The Seizure of Political Power in Cuba,” 179. A U.S. Army officer, Aaron conducted extensive interviews with U.S. military attaches and military trainers who were present in Cuba from 1956–1959. 31. Ibid., 175–6. 32. The author found twenty such references to United States military conversations with Cuban junior officers in the period 1952–8 in official dispatches. One could conclude that many more conversations took place between these two groups that were never noted in embassy dispatches to DOS. 33. Sec Memo, DOS, Havana, “Naval Attaché Reports Further Dissatisfaction Among Cuban Naval Officers,” February 9, 1953, 737.00/2–953, CSDF, NA. 34. Lionel Krisel, interview by author, 28 May 1999, telephone conversation. 35. Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, 14 April 1954, 737.00/4–1454, CSDF, NA. 36. See Memorandum of Conversation (Stewart, Leonhardy, Lopez Fresquet), 8 April 1957, “Revolutionary Activities Against Batista Regime,” CSDF, NA. 37. Air Intelligence Information Report AF731987, 5 April 1956, “Conspiracy to Overthrow Government,” RG 341, NA. 38. Thomas, The Cuban Revolution, 12; See also Jorge I.Domínguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 126. 39. Fermoselle, 231. 40. Carl J.Regan, “The Armed Forces of Cuba, 1933–1959” (Masters Thesis, University of Florida, 1970), 113. It is important to remember that Batista’s power had always relied on military support, although he did not rest his regime on this support alone. 41. Ibid., 114–5. 42. Jules Dubois, Fidel Castro: Rebel-Liberator or Dictator? (Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1959), 157; See also references to Mafia ties, Jules R.Benjamin, The United

Notes

43. 44.

45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64. 65.

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States and the Origins of the Cuban Revolution: An Empire for Liberty in the Age of National Liberation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 125. Sec Memo, DOS, Havana, “To Officer in Charge of the American Mission,” 10 January 1953, 737.00/1–1053, CSDF, NA. Thomas, The Cuban Revolution, 66. For Fidel Castro’s views regarding Batista’s military see Lee Lockwood, Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel (New York: Westview Press, 1990), 165–166. Sec Memo, DOS, Havana, “Naval Attaché Reports Further Dissatisfaction Among Cuban Naval Officers,” 9 February 1953, 737.00/2–953, CSDF, NA. Regan, 114–115; See also Louis A.Pérez, Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 304 for a comparison of how much ordinary Cubans earned at the time. Herbert L.Matthews, Revolution in Cuba: An Essay in Understanding (New York: Scribner, 1975), 87. Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, 14 April 1954, CSDF, NA. Pérez, Arms and Politics in Cuba, 133. Intelligence Report #1289324, 6 September 1955, “Artillery Firing Practice,” RG 319, NA. U.S. Army Caribbean Command, Basic Intelligence Study Latin America—Cuba, June 1957, Intelligence Document File “950000” File 1947–1962, RG 319, NA. Department of Defense Report to the National Security Council, October 1955, “Status of Military Assistance Programs as of 30 June 1955, Area of Country Report—Latin America,” White House Office of the Special Assistant to the NSC, NSC Series, Status of Project Subseries, Box 6, EL. See for example, Conf Memo, 3 October 1957, “Instruction from the Secretary of State to the Embassy in Cuba,” FRUS 1955–1957, 856–7. Memo from the Special Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Hill) to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for InterAmerican Affairs (Snow), “U.S. Military Policy Towards Latin America,” 29 July 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, 148. Lionel Krisel, interview by author, 28 May 1999, telephone conversation. Conf Memo, G–2 to Army Attaché, “Evaluation of Report R–42–57,” 17 June 1957, Box 5078, RG 319, NA. Hugh Thomas, “The Origins of the Cuban Revolution,” The World Today 19 (October 1963): 448–9. Paterson, Contesting Castro, 52–3; For the milieu that was Havana see also: John Dorschner and Roberto Fabricio, The Winds of December (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1980), 15–25; Lionel Krisel, interview by author, 28 May 1999, telephone conversation. Howard Slaton, interview with author, 10 June 1999. Phillip Klepak, interview by author, 25 May 1999, telephone conversation. Smith, Talons of the Eagle, 131. Paterson, Contesting Castro, 130; For Batista’s thoughts on Abraham Lincoln see Fulgencio Batista, The Growth and Decline of the Cuban Republic (New York: Devin-Adair, 1964), 271–2. Smith, Talons of the Eagle, 130. Stephen G.Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 36.

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66. Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, “Quarterly Report on the Operation and Status of Programs under the Mutual Security Act of 1952,” July 14, 1953, CSDF, NA. 67. Smith, Talons of the Eagle, 125. 68. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 20. 69. Y (Louis Halle), “On a Certain Impatience with Latin America,” Foreign Affairs 28 (July 1950): 569. 70. Smith, Talons of the Eagle, 127. 71. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 29. 72. Milton Eisenhower, The Wine is Bitter: The United States and Latin America (New York: Doubleday, 1963), 317. 73. Pérez, Army Politics in Cuba, 137–8; Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, “Arrest on Conspiracy Charges of Retired Cuban Naval Officers and Reaction to the Mamoroneck Arms Seizure,” 23 December 1952, 737.00/12–2352, CSDF, NA. 74. Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, 9 October 1953, 737.00/10–953, CSDF, NA. 75. Regan, 118. Based on his interview with Manuel Varela Castro (ex-lieutenant colonel of the Constitutional Army), Miami, Florida, 18 July 1969. He was the primary source consulted for determining attitudes and motivation of the dissident junior officers and was the second ranking person behind Colonel Barquín in the insurrection. 76. Thomas, The Cuban Revolution, 98. On the concern Fidel Castro had with Barquín being a possible rival for power see Carlos Franqui, Diary of the Cuban Revolution (New York: Viking, 1980), 208–9. 77. Ibid. But Barquín would ultimately not challenge Castro for power. See Neill Macaulay, A Rebel in Cuba: An American Memoir (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970), 133–4. 78. Conf Memo, Secretary of State (hereafter SOS), Havana, 4 April 1956, 737.00/ 4–456, CSDF, NA. 79. Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, “Trials of Army Conspirators,” 13 April 1956, 737.00/4–1356, CSDF, NA. 80. Thomas, The Cuban Revolution, 98. 81. Pérez, Army Politics in Cuba, 148. 82. Fermoselle, 227–228. 83. Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, “Trials of Army Conspirators,” 13 April 1956, 737.00/4–1356, CSDF, NA. 84. Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, “Batista Administration, Analysis of Present Strength and the Retirement of General Garcia Tunon,” 1 December 1952, 737.00/12– 152, CSDF, NA. Also, DOS, Havana, 21 April 1954, 737.00/4–2154, CSDF, NA. 85. Pérez, Army Politics in Cuba, 151. 86. Sec Memo, Embassy Havana Telegram #475, “Revolutionary Activities Against the Batista Regime (interview with Sr. Rufo López Fresquet, Lawyer and Economist),” 4 April 1957, 737.00/4–857, CSDF, NA. 87. Conf Memo, DOS, Havana, “Recent Political and Instructional Developments,” 27 April 1957, 737.00/4–2759, CSDF, NA. 88. Morley, 41. 89. Ibid., 46. 90. For Ambassador’s Smith’s views of the arms embargo see his memoir Earl E.T. Smith, The Fourth Floor: An Account of the Castro Revolution (New York: Random House, 1962), 116. 91. Transcript of Recorded Interview with Dr. Milton Eisenhower, 6 March 1965, The John Foster Dulles Oral History Project, Princeton University, EL, 10. 92. Ibid., 22–23.

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93. Conf Memo, Havana, DOS, 14 January 1959, “Background of Embargo on Cuba,” RG 59, CSDF, NA. The United States furnished military equipment and materiel to Cuba three different ways: 1. On a commercial basis through private concerns in the United States; 2. On a grant basis under the Mutual Security Act; 3. On a reimbursable basis under the Mutual Security Act. The latter two methods constitute what this study refers to as “MAP-supplied military equipment.” 94. The one exception was 19 May 1958 when two Cuban cargo planes flew one thousand two hundred miles round trip from Havana to exchange some defective rocket heads that the Government of Cuba had purchased in 1956. The State Department tried to prevent this one-time use of the Naval Base as a place from refueling and ammunition, but their telegram arrived several hours too late. See Conf Memo, Havana, DOS, 2 July 1958, RG59, CSDF, NA; Conf Memo, DOS Instruction A-270, SOS, Havana, 16 May 1957, CSDF, NA. 95. See Conf Memo, Leonhardy to Rubottom, 4 April 1957, CSDF, NA. 96. Except for the replacement of two hundred rocket heads in May 1958, the last shipment of arms from the United States to the Government of Cuba was in October 1957. See Park Wollam to Edward Little, 19 January 1959, CSDF, NA. 97. Conf Memo, Havana, DOS, 13 September 1957, CSDF, NA. 98. Conf Memo, Curtis to Snow, 12 September 1957, CSDF, NA. 99. Ibid. 100. Fulgencio Batista, Cuba Betrayed (New York: Vantage Press, 1962), 42, 71–2, 93, 96–7. 101. Pérez, Army Politics in Cuba, 163. 102. On the conflicts between various agencies regarding the embargo see for example Michael J.Mazarr, Semper Fidel, 241–2. 103. Smith, Fourth Floor, 86. 104. FRUS, 1955–7, 845–6 and 853–4. 105. Conf Memo, Havana, SOS, 16 July 1958, “Current Situation in Cuba,” CSDF, NA. 106. Letter, Major Claudio Medel to author, 18 June 2000. 107. Conf Memo, USARMA to Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Department of the Army, 21 July 1958, RG 319, Box 58, Project Decimal File, NA. 108. Smith, The Closest of Enemies, 30 and 35. 109. Mazarr, 237. 110. Phillip Klepak, interview by author, 25 May 1999, telephone conversation 111. Ibid. See also Smith, The Closest of Enemies, 33–4. 112. Conf Memo by the Chief of Naval Operations for JCS, “Suspension of Delivery of Military Equipment and Military Sales to Cuba,” 19 April 1958, DDQS, Fiche 149C. 113. FRUS 1958–1960, 117–118. 114. Paterson, Contesting Castro, 92 115. Pre-Press Conference, 9 April 1958, Box 32, DDE Diary Series, Ann Whitman File, EL. 116. “Discussion at the 375th Meeting of the National Security Council, 8 August 1958, Box 10, Summaries of Discussions, Ann Whitman File, EL. 117. Conf Memo, Chairman of the JCS to the Secretary of Defense, 30 December 1958, “Status of Relations with Cuba,” DDQS, Fiche 150B. 118. Memo of Conversation with the President, 24 December 1958, DDQS, Fiche 240. 119. Huntington, 259. 120. Attachés were not allowed to observe Cuban military operations against Castro in Oriente province. However, they did have access to dispatches from the Santiago

156

Observing Our Hermanos de Armas consulate, which tracked the Cuban Army’s efforts against Castro in 1957 and 1958. Phillip Klepak, interview by author, 25 May 1999, telephone conversation.

CHAPTER FIVE: U.S. ATTACHÉS AND THE BOLIVIAN MNR, 1958–1964 1. Alexander, Bolivia: Past, Present and Future of Its Politics, 99; See also James Malloy and Sylvia Borzutzky, “The Praetorianization of the Revolution: 1964– 1967,” 43. 2. Christopher Mitchell, The Legacy of Populism in Bolivia, 84. 3. James Dunkerley, Rebellion in the Veins: Political Struggle in Bolivia, 1952– 1982 (London: Verso, 1984), 74. 4. William Brill, Military Intervention in Bolivia: The Overthrow of Paz Estenssoro and the MNR (Washington: Institute for the Comparative Study of Political Systems, 1967), 23. According to Brill, Paz’s other alternatives included the MNR “Left Sector” led by Lechín and the right of center MNR group headed by Hernán Siles. See also Maria Wagner, Reformism in the Bolivian Armed Forces: Juan José Torres, A Case Study, (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1986). 5. Cole Blasier, “The United States and the Revolution,” 95–97; See also: Naoki Kamimura, “The United States and the Bolivian Revolutionaries, 1943–1954: From Hostility to Accommodation to Assistance”; Jennifer Leigh Bailey, “Dependent Revolution: The United States and Radical Change in Bolivia and Cuba.” 6. See for example, Robert O.Kirkland, “United States Assistance to the Bolivian Military, 1958–1964” (paper presented at the Middle Atlantic Conference of Latin American Studies, Trenton, NJ, March 1998). I go on to note that U.S. officials in Washington and on the ground in Bolivia made judgments on the situation which led them to see a reconstituted and strengthened military as the centerpiece of its Bolivian policy. They thought that the MNR moderate elements, like Paz, could not or would not undertake the creation and maintenance of a rule of law in which property and other rights necessary to advance economic growth would be protected. Nor could Paz and his supporters check the acquisition of power by formal or informal means of various social and political groups, especially those aligned with the left. The problem was one of a perceived inadequacy of MNR leadership. Paz and other MNR leaders would not uphold the rule of law. The military, in direct conversations with U.S. officials, agreed to do just that and were thus backed as a logical ballast in an unstable political system. Over time, U.S. officials convinced themselves that reconstituting the military would help Bolivia achieve economic stability, the rule of law, and a narrowing of the opportunities in the political system that the left and labor could exploit. 7. Kenneth Lehman, Bolivia and the United States: A Limited Partnership, (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999), 151; Dunkerley, 113. 8. Charles Corbett, The Latin American Military as a Socio-political Force: Case Studies of Bolivia and Argentina (Miami, Center for Advanced International Studies, 1972), 29. 9. Robett Alexander, The Bolivian National Revolution (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1958), 144. 10. Brill, 15–16. There was a general elimination of senior officers. Only two of the twenty-six officers who were promoted to brigadier general before 1949 played any role in the post-1952 army.

Notes

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11. Ibid., 32. Paz was considered to the right in the MNR hierarchy. The left, led by Lechín, was the strongest advocate for the elimination of the military. This is not surprising as the civilian militia was controlled to a certain extent by Lechín’s miner unions. 12. Blasier, “The United States and the Revolution,” 95. 13. Herbert Klein, Bolivia: The Evolution of a Multi-Ethnic Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 234–5. Klein, in his survey narrative notes societal as well as economic breakdown. For an in depth explanation of the Bolivian economic situation see James Wilkie, The Bolivian Revolution and U.S. Aid Since 1952: Financial Background and Context of Political Decisions (Los Angeles: Latin American Center, University of California, 1969); and Cornelius Zondag, The Bolivian Economy, 1952–1965: The Revolution and Its Aftermath (New York: Praeger, 1966). 14. Uncl Memo, William B.Macomber, Jr. to Henry Dworshak, United States Senator, “Response to Congressional Inquiry,” 27 January 1961, 724.00/1–1661, CSDF, NA. The United States program began with shipments of essential food stuffs, aviation gasoline, machinery and equipment. Most of these good were sold to local importing firms and payment was made in local currency (bolivianos) which was deposited into a special account retained in the Bolivian economy. See also, Victor Andrade, My Missions for Revolutionary Bolivia, 1944–1962 (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), 126–193 for explanations as to why the United States decided to aid the Bolivian government. See also James Siekmeier, Aid, Nationalism and Inter-American Relations—Guatemala, Bolivia, and the United States 1945–1961 (Lewiston: E. Mellen Press, 1999). 15. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, “Anarchy and Arbitrary Government in Bolivia,” 724.00/ 9–2962, CSDF, NA. The embassy systematically defined the causes of disorder in Bolivia: Caciquismo or regional bossism, localism, thuggery, class and organizational strife and labor indiscipline. Caciquismo was the “ambitious and ruthless leader of a region quickly consolidating power in his area by persuasion and illegal coercion.” Caciquismo perpetuated itself because of “the tradition of discipline and absolute submission to the state.” Localism was the violent application of Caciquismo, where “regional bosses caused internal instability by incessant struggles with local campesino chiefs.” Prepotencia was arrogant and lawless behavior by “thugs” who operated under the protection of party sector heads. Thuggery was violence manifested in “shootingsprees, destructive action, and refusal to pay bills.” Lawlessness by labor leaders was caused by government reluctance to “curb labor indiscipline and excesses.” 16. Memorandum, DOS to the President of Bolivia, “Letter of Introduction, Major Paul M.Wimert, U.S. Army Attaché,” 21 May 1959, CSDF, NA. 17. Paul Wimert, interview by author, 2 June 1999. 18. Ibid. 19. Letter, Ambassador Stepansky to General Alva Fitch, ACofS for Intelligence, Department of the Army, 12 October 1962, CSDF, NA. 20. Ibid. 21. Paul Wimert, interview by author, 2 June 1999. 22. Memorandum, William Dentzer (Director, Bolivian-Chilean Affairs, U.S. State Department) to Ralph Dungan (U.S. Ambassador, Santiago), 14 May 1965, RG 59, Subject Files 1962–6, Political Affairs, Attachés, NA. 23. The Journal of Mutual Security (March 1961):188. 24. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, “Joint Week 15,” 12 April 1960, CSDF, NA. 25. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, “Joint Week 25,” 21 June 1960,” CSDF, NA.

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26. IR#2151524, “Quasi-Military Forces, Bolivia,” 15 August 1960, RG 319, Army Decimal File, NA. 27. Journal of Mutual Security (March 1961):188–9. 28. Wimert was scathing in his criticism of the U.S. Army mission, commenting that the mission had no representative present at any of the exercises he observed. 29. IR#2174671, “Escort Regiment Field Exercises,” 28 June 1961, Army Decimal File, RG 319, NA. 30. IR#2178076, “Field Exercise—1st Bn. Waldo Ballivian Regt,” 16 August 1961, Army Decimal File, RG 319, NA. 31. Asked the sort of assistance the army required, the general made a laundry list. To facilitate mobility, both by road and air, truck and transport aircraft were needed as well as some facilities for moving troops by river. The army also required expanded communication facilities and improved engineering capability. 32. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, “Bolivian Army Desires Military Pact with the United States Government,” 9 March 1960, Box 1–3, RG 84, NA. 33. Conf Memo, SOS, La Paz, “Memorandum Stepansky to Rusk,” 24 August 1961, CSDF, NA; Stepansky, with the encouragement of Colonel Wimert, would continue through 1962 to push the State Department to increase its aid to the Bolivian military. See for example: Memo on Conversation (Stepansky, Barrientos, Wimert), “Bolivian Political Situation,” 23 April 1962, RG 59, Box 2, NA; Also Conf Memo, SOS, La Paz, “Department Circular Telegram 230,” 16 August 1962, CSDF, NA. 34. This view would be laid out in formal memorandum in April 1962 by the State Department with concurrence of the Department of Defense. See Conf Memo, DOS, “Policy Guidelines Paper for Bolivia,” 10 April 1962, RG 59, General Records of the Department of State, Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, Office of West Coast Affairs, Records Relating to Bolivia, 1960–1963, Box 2, NA. 35. Stephen G.Rabe, “Controlling Revolutions: Latin America, The Alliance for Progress, and Cold War Anti-Communism,” in Kennedy’s Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961–1963, ed. Thomas Paterson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 107. 36. Benjamin Keen, A History of Latin America (New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 2000), 561. See also Stephen G.Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F.Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 18–19. 37. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, “Week 31,” 1 August 1961, 724.00/8–161, CSDF, NA. 38. Charles M.Jones, “The Role of the Military in Latin American Government” (Student Thesis, U.S. Army War College, 1961), 27. 39. Conf Memo, from William M.Leffingwell, Deputy Director of Military Assistance, to Fowler Hamilton, Director, Agency for International Development, DOS, 4 March 1962, Box 2, RG 59, Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, Office of West Coast Affairs, Records Relating to Bolivia, 1960–1963, NA. For example, in the Fiscal Year 1962 U.S. military assistance training budget, Bolivia was given a total of 1.2 million dollars, some of which provided for a sixteen man MTT to coach newly commissioned Bolivian officers in counter-insurgency and counter-guerrilla methods and practices. In May of the same year, a second MTT arrived to instruct Bolivian engineers on upkeep of heavy equipment. The MTT was supervised by General Robert E.Warren, Director of Troop Operations. The Max Toledo Motorized Battalion received indoctrination from a special MTT in

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July of the same year, providing the motorized battalion specialized drill on mechanized infantry tactics and maintenance of equipment. See Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, “Weeks 20 and 27” (17 May 1962 and 12 July 1962), CSDF, NA and Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, “Army Praised During MNR Anniversary,” 8 April 1961, 724.00/4–1861, CSDF, NA. 40. Conf Memo, Alfonso Gumucio Reyes, Minister of Economy, Government of Bolivia to Teodoro Moscoso, Alliance for Progress, 1 June 1962, Box 1–3, RG 84, NA. 41. Third Annual Inter-American Air Force Chiefs Conference, “Presentations,” United Stated Air Force, 2 May 1963, RG 341, NA. 42. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, “Week 18,” 4 May 1962, 724.00/5–462, CSDF, NA. 43. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, “Week 25,” 22 June 1962, 724.00/6–2262, CSDF, NA. 44. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, “Week 29,” 26 July 1962, 724.00/7–2662, CSDF, NA. 45. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, “Disturbances in Cliza Valley,” 3 December 1962, 724.00/12–362, CSDF, NA. 46. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, “Conversation with Minister of Defense,” December 13, 1962, 724.00/10–1362, CSDF, NA. 47. FRUS 52–54, National Intelligence Estimate, NIE 92–54, “Probable developments in Bolivia,” 19 March 1954. 48. Memo for the President, “The Crisis in Bolivia,” 3 March 1961, Box WH-3, Schlesinger Paper, JFK Presidential Library. 49. The Journal of Mutual Security (September 1960): 175. 50. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, “Information Memo,” National Security File, Bolivia, JFK Library. 51. Conf Memo, SOS, La Paz, “Current Political Situation,” National Security File, Bolivia, LBJ Library. 52. Fox discovered that the Bolivians were not using oxygen for their takeoffs and landings. Oxygen was critical for pilots to operate aircraft safely. 53. Edward Fox, interview with author, 24 May 1999; Other authors state that Fox first met Barrientos at a training course in Oklahoma. This is incorrect. 54. Ibid. 55. Sec Memo General Lansdale to Secretary of Defense McNamara, “Visit to Bolivia,” 3 June 1963, National Security Files, JFK Library. 56. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, “General Barrientos Dedicates Schools in Cliza Valley,” 20 October 1962, NSDF, NA. 57. Defense Intelligence Agency Information Report #1808002363, “General Barrientos Continues Work in Cliza Valley,” 23 April 1963, Defense Intelligence Agency Files, Suitland, MD. 58. Air Intelligence Report #1808000163, “CG Bolivian Air Force Twice Threatens Resignation,” 10 January 1963, DIA Archives, Suitland. 59. Intelligence Information Report #1808007463, “Bolivian Military and Local Political Picture (BARRIENTOS),” 29 October 1963, DIA Archives, Suitland. 60. Air Intelligence Report #1808001263, “General Barrientos Continues Work on Cliza Valley,” 23 April 1963, DIA Archives, Suitland. 61. Ibid. 62. Intelligence Information Report #1808007463, 29 October 1963, “Bolivian Military and Local Political Picture. (BARRIENTOS),” DIA Archives, Suitland. 63. Intelligence Information Report #1808007463, “Bolivian Military and Local Political Picture (BARRIENTOS),” 29 October 1963, DIA Archives, Suitland.

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64. Sec Memo, DOS, La Paz, Memorandum of Conversation, “Bolivian Political Situation,” 23 April 1962, Box 35, RG 84, NA. 65. Ibid. 66. Edward Fox, interview with author, 24 May 1999, Telephone Conversation. 67. Conf Memo, USCINCSO, SOS, 12 December 1963, CSDF, NA. 68. Conf Memo, DOS, “American Hostages—Request for Military Support,” 14 December 1963, CSDF, NA. 69. Interviews with Fox and Wimert. Wimert especially did not think highly of Ambassador Henderson, seeing him as a bureaucrat who was more anxious to please his superiors than to hold fast to his own convictions. Henderson had risen quickly through the Foreign Service ranks, being one of the youngest ambassadors by the time of his appointment. 70. Lehman, 140. 71. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, 25 February 1964, CSDF, NA. 72. Lehman, 140; Blasier, “The United States and the Revolution,” 97. 73. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, 2 March 1964, “General Ovando’s Views on Aspects of the Bolivian Political Situation,” CSDF, NA. 74. Ibid. 75. Conf Memo, SOS, La Paz, 9 May 1964, Bolivia File, LBJ Library. 76. Conf Memo, SOS, La Paz, 16 May 1964, CSDF, NA; Edward Fox, interview with author, 12 March 2003, Telephone Conversation. 77. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, 18 May 1964, CSDF, NA. 78. Conf Memo, DOS, La Paz, 14 July 1964, CSDF, NA. 79. The author is the only person ever to interview the colonel regarding his time in Bolivia. 80. Edward Fox, interview with author, 24 May 1999, Telephone Conversation. 81. Conf Memo, SOS, La Paz, 9 October 1964, CSDF, NA. 82. Edward Fox, interview with author, 24 May 1999, Telephone Conversation. 83. Conf Memo, SOS, La Paz, 27 October 1964, CSDF, NA. 84. Dunkerley, 113.

CONCLUSIONS 1. 2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7.

This was due to the proximity of Cuba to the United States and their “special relationship.” These authors would probably agree, though, that the ideal attaché is one that has all the skills that Fox had, but understands the difference between reporting and becoming involved in the politics of his host country. Chavez and Wimert probably come closest to this ideal. Department of the Army Pamphlet 600–3, “Commissioned Officer Development and Career Management,” 1 October 1998, Paragraph 46.0. OPMS XXII Smart Book: Leaders for the 21st Century, (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., January 1999). Gary McClellan of Defense Intelligence School, interview by author, 17 June 1998, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C. Also, John T.Fishel of Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, National Defense University, interview by author, 26 May 1998, Washington, D.C. Ted Togashi, of Defense Intelligence Agency, interview by author, 28 May 1998, Washington, D.C. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Executive Order 12958, “Classified National Security Information,” 17 April 1995.

Notes

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APPENDICES 1. 2. 3.

Bishop, “The Air Attaché—A Personnel Enigma,” 45. Defense Intelligence Agency, “Defense Attaché System 1975–1980,” III–H–15. Defense Intelligence Agency, “Defense Attaché System 1975–1980,” III–H– 44–46.

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SECONDARY BOOKS AND ARTICLES Adams, Richard. Crucifixion by Power: Essays on Guatemalan National Social Structure, 1994–1966. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970. Alexander, Robert. Bolivia: Past, Present and Future of Its Politics. New York: Praeger, 1982. Alexander, Robert. The Bolivian National Revolution. New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1958. Ambrose, Stephen. Ike’s Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment. New York: Doubleday, 1981. Ameringer, Charles D.U.S. Foreign Intelligence: The Secret Side of American History. Lexington: DC Heath, 1990. Andrew, Christopher M. Her Majesty’s Secret Service: The making of the British Intelligence Community. New York: Viking, 1986. Andrew, Chistopher M. “Whitehall, Washington and the Intelligence Services,” International Affairs LIII (1977). Barnett, Vincent M. The Representation of the United States Abroad. New York: Praeger, 1965. Barrett, Raymond J. “The Role of the Military Attaché.” Military Review XLXI (May 1971):50–55. Barrett, Raymond J. “Politico-Military Expertise: A Practical Program.” Military Review XLVI (November 1966):45–51. Beck, Kent M. “Necessary Lies, Hidden Truths: Cuba in the 1960 Campaign.” Diplomatic History8, (Winter 1984):37–59. Bell, Ronald K. and others, “An Examination and Evaluation of the Defense Attaché Personnel System.” Student Thesis, National War College, 1983. Benjamin, Jules R. The United States and the Origins of the Cuban Revolution: An Empire for Liberty in the Age of National Liberation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Betts, Richard K. Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977. Betts, Richard K. “Analysis, War, and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures are Inevitable.” World Politics 31 (October 1978):61–89. Bidwell, Bruce W. History of the Military Intelligence Division, Department of the Army General Staff: 1775–1941. Frederick: University Publications of America, 1986. Blancke, Wendell W. The Foreign Service of the United States. New York: Praeger, 1969. Blasier, Cole. The Hovering Giant: U.S. Responses to Revolutionary Change in Latin America, 1910–1985. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976. Blasier, Cole. “The United States and the Revolution.” In Beyond the Revolution: Bolivia Since 1952, ed. James Malloy and Richard Thorn, 53–110. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971. Blum, William. The CIA: A Forgotten History. London: Zed Books, 1986. Breckinridge, Scott D. The CIA and the U.S. Intelligence System. Boulder: Westview Press, 1986. Brill, William. Military Intervention in Bolivia: The Overthrow of Paz Estenssoro and the MNR. Washington: Institute for the Comparative Study of Political Systems, 1967. Chavez, Manuel J. “Communism in Guatemala.” Air Intelligence Digest (July 1953), 30–34. Child, Paul, ed. Register of Graduates and Former Cadets 1802–1990. West Point: Association of Graduates, 1990. Cleveland, Harlan and others. The Overseas Americans. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960.

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Corbett, Charles. The Latin American Military as a Socio-political Force: Case Studies of Bolivia and Argentina. Miami: Center for Advanced International Studies, 1972. Cullather, Nicholas. Operation PBSUCCESS: The United States and Guatemala, 1952–1954. Washington, CIA Historians Office, 1998. Domínguez, Jorge I. Cuba: Order and Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978. Domínguez, Jorge I. “The Batista Regime in Cuba.” In Sultanistic Regimes, ed. H.E. Chehabi and Juan J.Linz, 113–131. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1998. Dorschner, John, and Roberto Fabricio. The Winds of December. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1980. Doughty, Robert A. and others. Warfare in the Western World: Military Operations Since 1871. Lexington, MA: D.C.Heath, 1996. Dubois, Jules. Fidel Castro: Rebel-Liberator or Dictator? Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959. Dulles, Allen. The Craft of Intelligence. New York: Harper and Rowe, 1963. Dunkerley, James. Rebellion in the Veins: Political Struggle in Bolivia, 1952–1982. London: Verso, 1984. Edel, Wilbur. “Diplomatic History—State Department Style.” Political Science Quarterly 106, (Winter 1991–Winter 1992), 695–712. Eisenhower, Milton. The Wine is Bitter: The United States and Latin America. New York: Doubleday, 1963. Fermoselle, Rafael. The Evolution of the Cuban Military: 1492–1986. Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1987. Frey, Linda S. and Marsha L.Frey. The History of Diplomatic Immunity. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999. Franqui, Carlos. Diary of the Cuban Revolution. New York: Viking Press, 1980. Glantz, David. “Observing the Soviets: U.S. Army Attaches in Eastern Europe during the 1930s.” The Journal of Military History 55 (April 1991):153–184. Gleijeses, Piero. “The Death of Francisco Arana: A Turning Point in the Guatemalan Revolution.” Journal of Latin American Studies 22 (October 1990):527–552. Gleijeses, Piero. Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944– 1954. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Handy, Jim. Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, 1944–1954. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Hersh, Seymour. The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House. New York: Summit Books, 1983. Holley, I.B. Ideas and Weapons: Exploitation of the Aerial Weapons by the United States During World War II: A Study in the Relationship of Technological Advance, Military Doctrine, and the Development of Weapons. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1953. Huntington, Samuel. The Soldier and the State: The Theory of Politics of Civil-Military Relations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959. Immerman, Richard. The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982. Johnson, John. The Military and Society in Latin America. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964. Jonas, Susanne. The Battle for Guatemala. Boulder: Westview Press, 1991. Kahn, David. “U.S. Views of Germany and Japan.” In Knowing One’s Enemies: Intel ligence Assessment Before the Two World Wars, ed. Ernest R.May, 476–502. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

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Vatgs, Alfred. The Military Attaché. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967. Weigley, Russell F. History of the United States Army. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984. Wilkie, James. The Bolivian Revolution and U.S. Aid since 1952: Financial Background and Context of Political Decisions. Los Angeles: Latin American Center, University of California, 1969. Wise, David, and Thomas Ross. The Invisible Government. New York: Bantam, 1965. Y (Louis Halle), “On a Certain Impatience with Latin America.” Foreign Affairs 28 (July 1950):565–573. Yeaton, Ivan D. Memoirs of Ivan D.Yeaton, USA, 1919–1953. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1976. Zondag, Cornelius. The Bolivian Economy, 1952–1965: The Revolution and Its Aftermath. New York: Praeger, 1966.

INTERVIEWS Bevan, Wendell, Brigadier General, U.S. Air Force, telephone, 25 April 1999. Calderhead, William, telephone, 10 June 1999. Chavez, Manuel, Lieutenant Colonel U.S. Air Force, Miami, Florida, 29–30 May 1999 (telephone), 10 March 2000. Fishel, John, Washington, D.C., 26 May 1998. Fox, Edward. Colonel, U.S. Air Force, telephone, 24 May 1999 and 12 March 2003. Huser, Herbert, Washington, D.C., 26 May 1998. Klepak, Phillip, Captain, U.S. Navy, telephone, 25 May 1999. Krisel, Lionel, Captain, U.S. Navy, telephone, 28 May 1999. McClellan, Gary, Washington, D.C., 17 June 1998. McCormick, Aloysius: Colonel U.S. Army, telephone, 1 September 1997. Medel, Claudio, Miami Florida, letter, 18 June 2000. Ramsey, Russell, telephone, 20 May 1998. Togashi, Ted, Washington, D.C., 28 May 1998. Treadway, Jane, telephone, 21 October 2000. Wimert, Paul, Colonel, U.S. Army, Waterford , VA, 2 June 1999.

DISSERTATIONS AND OTHER UNPUBLISHED MATERIAL Aaron, Harold R. “The Seizure of Political Power in Cuba, 1956–1959.” Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1964. Bailey, Jennifer L. “Dependent Revolution: The United States and Radical Change in Bolivia and Cuba.” Ph.D. diss., University of Denver, 1990 Bishop, Charles L. “The Air Attaché- A Personnel Enigma.” Student Thesis, U.S. Air Command and Staff College, 1974. Champion, George P. “We Can Improve the Air Attaché System.” Student Thesis, U.S. Air Force War College, 1952. Chardkoff, Richard. “Communist Toehold in the Americas: A History of Official United States Involvement in the Guatemalan Crisis, 1954.” Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 1967. Chavez, Manuel. “Berman (Bernice-Manuel Chavez) Experience,” unpublished manuscript, undated. Cooper, Joseph D. “Some Recommendations for the Improvement in Training and Utilization of the Air Attachés.” Student Thesis, U.S. Air Force War College, 1966.

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Index

Agrarian Department (DAN), 69 Agrarian Reform, Guatemala, 56 and the Guatemalan armed forces, 64–67 Alexander, Urey, 45 Alliance for Progress, 11, 109 Ambassadors, U.S. supervisory responsibility of attachés, 30–31 Analysts, intelligence importance to intelligence process, 6–7 Annapolis. See United States Naval Academy Arana, Francisco, 68 Arbenz, Jacobo, 10, 55 agrarian reform, 56 overthrow of, 75–76 Arévalo, Juan, 63, 68 Army War College (AWC), U.S., 9 Attachés, U.S. avoidance of underdeveloped areas, 41 counterintelligence, 44 duties and responsibilities (post World War II), 27–36 encryption devices, 44 entertainment responsibilities, 29 language skills, 3 language training, 38–39 length of tour, 42–43 literature review, 3

photography, 44 political-military reporting, 3 need for income, 23 selection, 37–43 training and preparation, general, 6 training and preparation (preWorld War II), 23–25 training (post World War II), 43–48 views of language training, 47 views of SIS, 45 wives, importance of, 38 Attachés, U.S. embassy, Cuba on arms embargo against Cuba, 95 on Castro, 79, 95 Barquín, Ramón, 78, 79, 82 1956 coup against Batista, 90–91 Barrientos, René, 51, 53, 101, 121 actions during 1964 hostage crisis, 117 anti-communism, 116 assassination attempt, 117 career, 113 on Civic Action, 110, 114 presidential ambitions, 114 role in Edward Fox’s assignment to Bolivia, 113 Barrios, Roberto, 71 Barzanallana, José, 62 173

174 Basic Intelligence Directive (BID), 33 Batista, Fulgencio, 50, 88 coups against, 90–91 1952 coup, 84 on U.S. arms embargo, 94 Beaulac, Willard, 88–89 Bevan, Wendell, 60, 126, 147n Bigelow, John, 23 Bissell, Richard, 72 Bliss, Tasker H., 16 Bolivia Civic Action, 109–110 economic collapse (1953), 104 historiography (1958–1964), 102–103 militias, 106 U.S. economic aid to, 104 Bolivia, armed forces, 102–103 popularity of Barrientos, 115 Borbonet, Enrique, 91 Bowdler, William, 97 Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). See Department of State, U.S. Burke, Arleigh on arms embargo against Cuba, 98 Butler, Smedley (“Old Gimlet Eye”), 16 Cabot, John, 64 Calderhead, William, 59–60 view of Chavez, 60 Caldwell, William, 83 Caribbean Command, U.S. See Southern Command, U.S. Castillo Armas, Carlos, 10, 55, 73 Castle, William A., 18 Castro, Fidel, 77 Castro, Raúl, 95 Catasus, P., 50 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 30, 34, 44 on agrarian reform, 148n on arms embargo against Cuba, 95

Index intelligence gathering function at U.S. embassies, 32 Office of National Estimates (ONE), 35 relationship to attachés, 31–32 Cerruto, Jorge, 115 Chaco War, 103 Chaffee, Adna R., 17 Chavez, Bernice, 49 Chavez, Manuel, 11, 127–128, 129 career, 59–60 and the CIA, 73 language proficiency, 60 Chief of Mission. See Ambassador Cienfuegos Naval Revolt, Cuba, 94 Civic Action, 109 Clinton, Bill, 130 Cold War effect on attaché end strength, 1–2 Collins, J.Lawton, 88 Collins, Ross A., 19 Columbia armed forces service in the Korean War, 61 Colvin, William M., 140n Command and General Staff College (CGSC), U.S. Army, 9, 46 Country Team Concept, 29–30, 31 Craig, Malin, 22 views on attachés, 24 Cruz Salazar, José Luis, 69–70, 73–74 career, 149n Cruz Wer, Rogelio, 68, 70–71 Cuba historiography (1952–1958), 78–80 standard of living (1950s), 87 Cuba, armed forces guerrilla warfare training, 87 officer corps, 80–86 Cuban Revolution effect on Bolivia, 109 Cullom, Shelby M., 23 Curtis, E.Glion, 94

Index Daily Intelligence Digest, U.S. Army, 34 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), 9 Defense Language Institute (DLI), 9, 126 del Rio Chaviano, Alberto, 85 Department of Agriculture, U.S., 30 Department of Defense on arms embargo against Cuba, 95 interest in Latin America, 2 use of intelligence, 7–8 Department of State, U.S., 33 on arms embargo against Cuba, 95 Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), 44 use of attaché intelligence, 7–8 de Zengotita, Juan on Barquín insurrection, 91 Díaz, Carlos, 64, 68, 74 views on agrarian reform, 65–66 Dulles, Allen, 5, 40, 72 Dulles, John F., 72 on Cuban arms embargo, 80 on Latin American dictators, 88 Dysinger, Leonard, 50 Eglin, H.W.T., 18 Eisenhower administration, 77, 79 anti-communism, 80, 88 compared with Truman Administration, 90 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 72 Eisenhower, Milton on arms embargo against Cuba, 93 on Castro, 93 Embargo, arms, Cuba, 78–79, 92–99 Embargo, arms, Guatemala, 64 Fitch, Alva, 105 Foreign Area Officer (FAO) Program, U.S. Army, 130 Foreign Service Officers (FSOs), U.S. Department of State, 30 relations with attachés, 31

175 Foreign Service Officers, U.S. embassy, Cuba on arms embargo against Cuba, 95 on Castro, 95 Fortún, Federico, 117–118 Fox, Edward, 51, 52, 53, 127 career, 112–113 as CIA station chief, 120 language capability, 113 role in 1964 coup, 102 travels with Barrientos in Cliza Valley (1962–1963), 114 stops Barrientos’ coup attempt, 119 Franco, Francisco, 20 Franco-Prussian War, 13–14 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 3 Gardner, Arthur, 50, 81 Gilmore, Albert, 23 Girón, Luis, 61, 68, 69, 73–74 Godson, William F.H., 140n Gray, Gordon, 99 Great Depression effect on attaché end strength, 1, 24 Greffet, Charles V., 39 Grussendorf, Richard A., 43 Guatemala historiography of Arbenz era, 55–57 Guatemala, armed forces agrarian reform, 64–67 on Arbenz, 67 combat capabilities, 61–64 effect of arms embargo, 64 importance of, 55–56 Guevara, Ché, 95 Gutiérrez, Manuel, 70 Halle, Louis, 89 Hanford, Thomas, 64 Havana, 79 conditions (1950s), 87

176 Henderson, Douglas, 112, 118–119, 121, 127 Hitler, Adolph, 20 Holley, I.B. analytical framework, 6–8, 79 Hood, Reuben, 50 Hook, Robert, 31, 140n Hoover Report on the Reorganization of the Executive Branch (1955), 40 Hostage crisis, Bolivia (1963), 117 Humphrey, Chauncey B., 15 Huntington, Francis M., 23 Huser, Herbert, 36 Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC) National Indications Center, 35 Watch Committee, 35 Intelligence Review, U.S. Army, 34 International Railways of Central America (IRCA), 65 Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–36), 1, 20 Japanese East Asia “Co-Prosperity Sphere,” 20 Johnson, Louis, 71 Johnson, Lyndon B., 11 Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) on the Cuban military, 86 Kail, Samuel, 96 Keller, Fred, 83 Kennedy, John F., 11, 30, 77, 111 Kennedy, Robert, 11 Kent, Sherman, 143n King, J.C., 73 Kirkpatrick, Lyman, 5, 28 Kirten, William, 146n Klee Pharmacies (Guatemala), 74 Klepak, Phillip, 129 on Castro, 88 on the CIA, 97 on embassy parties, 87

Index Krisel, Lionel, 84, 85, 86 view of Cuba assignment, 87 Kuhn, Joseph E., 18 Land reform. See agrarian reform Langhorn, George T., 21 Language Proficiency Rating System, Foreign Service Institute (FSI), 46–7 Lansdale, Edward, 113 Lara, Carlos, 74 Lechín, Juan, 101–2, 103 Lemus, José Luis, 69 Lincoln, Abraham, 88 Lincoln, Francis, 19, 22 Lind, William, 105 MacArthur, Douglas, 17, 25 March, Payton C., 17, 18 Martin, Vernon, 72, 74 Martínez, Alfonzo, 66, 69 McAdam, Theodore J., 65 McClellan, Gary, 33–34 McCormick, Aloysius, 11, 61, 64, 66, 72, 74, 126, 128, 129 career, 57–58 language proficiency, 58 military reporting, 62–63 views of SIS, 58 Medel, Claudio, 96 Miles, Sherman, 17–18 Military Aid and Development Program (MADP), 78, 79 Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), 30 relations with attachés, 31 Military Intelligence Division (MID) origins, 14 Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS), 46 Military, Latin America coups, 2 professionalism, 2

Index Monzón, Elfego, 71, 74 Moscoso, Teodoro, 110 Mott, Bentley T., 18 Murphy, Grayson M.P., 15 Mussolini, Benito, 20 National Agrarian Department (DAN), Guatemala, 69 National Defense Act of 1920, 19 National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), 8, 35 Bolivia 1954, 111 Guatemala 1953, 63 National Intelligence Requirements (NIRs), 32 National Revolutionary Movement (MNR), 101, 103 National Security Council (NSC), 32–33, 44 intelligence directives, 33 policy papers, 8 Nixon, Richard M., 88 Observers, military. See Attachés Office of National Estimates (ONE). See CIA, Office of National Estimates Officer Professional Management System XXI (OPMS XXI), U.S. Army, 130 O’Meara, Andrew, 113 Orihuela, José J.W., 91 Osegueda, Raúl, 49 Ovando, Alfredo, 108, 115 opposition to Barrientos’ candidacy, 118 Panamanian Revolution (1903), 15–16 Paz, Victor, 51, 52, 101–2 1952 revolution, 103 overthrow of, 120–122 purge of military (1952), 157n rebuilding of the military, 102 PBSUCCESS, 10, 74

177 Peace Corps, 30 Pentagon. See Department of Defense, U.S. Pérez Coujil (Colonel), 85 Pershing, John J., 17 persona non grata, 28 Peurifoy, John, 33, 72 Philban, Tobias R., 38 Polytechnicos (Guatemala), 68 Ponce, Federico, 68 Ramos Avila, José, 91 Rhineland Crisis (1936), 20 Rojas González (General), 85 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 4 Roosevelt, Theodore, 15 Rubottom, Roy R., 92 Rusk, Dean, 108, 118–119, 121 Russo-Japanese War, 14, 16–17, 46 Sánchez, José, 66, 68, 70, 74 Salas, Toribio, 107 Sarti, Carlos, 49, 68, 69, 74 Schlesinger, Arthur, 111 Schoenfeld, Rudolf, 70 Scriven, George P., 16 Siles, Hernán, 101, 103 Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), 1, 20 Slaton, Howard, 50, 84 view of Cuba assignment, 87 Smith, Earl E.T., 92–93 Smith, Harry B., 45 Smith, James F., 45 Smith, Katherine, 25 Smith, Truman, 24 on attaché training, 25 Smith, Wayne on atmosphere in U.S. embassy, Havana, 97 Southern Command, U.S., 34 Spanish-American War, 16, 20, 81 Spanish Civil War, 1, 20 State Department, U.S. See Department of State, U.S.

178 Stephansky, Benjamin, 108, 116 on Wimert, 105 Strategic Intelligence School (SIS), 126 curriculum, 44–45 establishment of, 43 Strom, Earl, 108 Strong, Kenneth, 21 Stutesman, John, 113 Tabernilla, Carlos, 50, 84–85 Tabernilla, Francisco, 84 Tabernilla, Francisco (the elder), 84, 85, 96 Tabernilla, Marcelo, 85 Topping, John, 97 Treadway, Joseph, 84, 86, 127 on arms embargo 91 language proficiency, 82 Treadway, Samuel, 58, 126 Tropical Radio and Telegraph Company, 65 Truman administration, 63, 89 policy towards Latin America, 89 compared to the Eisenhower Administration, 90 Strategic Intelligence School (SIS), establishment of, 43 Truman, Harry S., 30 Twining, Nathan, 98–99 Ubico, Jorge, 68 Ugalde Carrillo, Manuel, 91 “Ugly American,” 4 United Fruit Company (UFCO), 65 United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 30 United States Information Service (USIS), 30

Index United States Intelligence Board (USIB), 35 United States Military Academy, 46 United States Naval Academy, 46 Valenzuela, Jesus, 74 Varela, Manuel, 91 Verano Operation, 78, 98 Villalaz, Juan, 49 Wagner, Arthur L. views of Latin America, 15 Walters, Vernon, 120 Warren, Robert E., 159n West Point. See United States Military Academy, West Point White, Thomas Dresser, 20 Wieland, William A., 92 Wimert, Pat, 51 Wimert, Paul, 36, 51, 103, 110, 127 on Bolivian army, 107 career, 105 on dangers of Bolivian militia, 106–107 horsemanship, 105 language ability, 106 on MAAGs, 158n view of Ambassador Henderson, 160n Wisner, Frank, 72 World War I, 17 Yeaton, Ivan on attaché training, 25 Young, Charles, 16 Zorro, 113